I don't see him making it out of a Republican primary with this baggage. His only hope is that it looks to be a pretty weak field, well and Republican's knack for overlooking stunning levels of hypocrisy. But still, this is pretty damning.

Tim Pawlenty Did WHAT?!

The power to pardon is a powerful thing, and often a useful instrument of mercy, particularly for those persons who have suffered enough from the poisoned fruits of their own misdeeds. But when the person pardoned goes on to re-offend, controversy erupts. So it is with Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Pardon Extraordinary of Jeremy A. Giefer.

Sally Jo Sorensen reported in Bluestem Prairie this past Sunday that Giefer, who had earlier this month been arrested on criminal sexual conduct and incest charges, had been pardoned by Pawlenty in 2008 for his 1994 sex crime of statuorily raping and impregnating a 14-year-old girl:

Did the Minnesota Board of Pardons conduct its due diligence when it granted Jeremy A. Giefer a “pardon extraordinary” in 2008? (Giefer’s name is misspelled on page 4 of the report, but a call to the BOP’s office on Wednesday confirmed the correct spelling).

Giefer’s arrest reveals a troubling past of dubious behavior–while raising eyebrows on the pardon during Pawlenty’s watch. Pawlenty is a member of the three person board.

Sorensen goes on to remind us that Tim Pawlenty had promised never to pardon sex offenders, who are known for their high recidivism rates.

It gets worse: CityPages’ Nick Pinto, following up on Sorensen’s story, confirmed that the girl who Giefer is currently charged with raping is none other than the daughter he had himself conceived with the underage girl back in 1994.

The fashionable thing around the web is to compare this case to that of Willie Horton. But unlike Tim Pawlenty, Michael Dukakis never promised not to pardon sex offenders. No, the case that resonates in my mind is that of Wayne Dumond.

See, back in the 1990s, around the time Jeremy Giefer was impregnating his first underaged victim with what would be his second, a convicted Arkansas rapist by the name of Wayne Dumond was being taken to the collective bosoms of law-and-order Republicans and conservatives nationwide. Why? Because he was convicted in 1985 after having raped a distant cousin of Bill Clinton’s.

Without a shred of evidence to back up their claims, the get-Clinton crowd agitated for Dumond’s release, claiming he’d been wrongly convicted, and then-governor Mike Huckabee happily played along. After intense pressure from Huckabee and the frothing right-wing anti-Clinton brigades, Dumond was paroled in January of 1997 — though his release was delayed until October of 1999, due to a special condition of the parole: Dumond was to immediately leave Arkansas, and at first the states of Texas, Florida and Missouri refused to allow him to move to their jurisdictions; he wound up being released in DeWitt, Arkansas, his home town.

Ten months later, Dumond moved to Missouri, and six weeks after that — in September 2000, less than a year after his parole — a Missouri woman, Carol Sue Shields, was found dead after having been raped in a manner similar to how Dumond raped Clinton’s young cousin. In June of 2001, another Missouri woman, Sara Andrasek, was also found raped and murdered in the same fashion, and soon afterward Dumond was arrested for Shields’ murder and considered a prime suspect in Andrasek’s.

Dumond would eventually be convicted for Shields’ death, and die in prison — and none of the law-and-order right-wing Clinton-hating people who helped free him have ever so much as acknowledged, much less apologized for, their roles in his release. Huckabee in particular has been, erm, less than honest about it.

Which means that I won’t be surprised if Tim Pawlenty, he who promised never to pardon sex offenders, is less than honest when discussing the events that led him to pardon Jeremy Giefer.

UPDATE: I’m reminded that Tim Pawlenty has broke his promise not once but twice, when he released against expert advice the man who would go on to rape and murder Dru Sjodin, whose death still resonates throughout the Upper Midwest.

Tim Pawlenty Did WHAT?! | MyFDL

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I'd like to know why he pardoned the man, though. I mean, I get Huckabee's playing to the right-wing nuts against his beliefs. Such is politics when you don't have the courage of your convictions.

But, here? Why would Pawlenty ever pardon such a man when he must know how it'll look on his CV?

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Because he married his victim. The honorable, christian thing to do.

Also, he wanted to open a daycare center next to his home. Can't do that as a registered sex offender.

But I'm honestly not as jaded as all that. In the original crime he was 19 and the girl, who was his girlfriend that he later married, was 14. One of those things that kinda makes America look a little too puritan on ya know... ruining someone's life over consequential sex under those circumstances. But time proved him to be a real scumbag to say the least and so Pawlenty is going to eat a bullet over his decision.

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Righteousness will always be the trap at the gates of hell