A LITTLE HARDBALL THROWN AT HUCKABEE

Election time is officially on, folks. Hillary is gay, Obama is an inexperienced fool, and on and on. Surely every candidate has a little something in their closets, some secret shrouded in fear at a time when one disclosure could cost you severely in the eyes of Iowa voters.

Apparently, Mike Huckabee has a little something in his ordained minister's closet, as well. Why haven't we heard of these ethics violations sooner? It's simple. Before he started inexplicably rising in the Iowa polls and becoming an official pain in the Mitt Romney political machine's collective asses, he had no chance. He was no threat whatsoever. Now he is number two in a virtual tie with Mitt (depending on which poll you tend to believe), and it is officially mud slingin' time. Here is a short synopsis from the Politico. Click on the link for the entire report.

An ordained Southern Baptist minister known for his charm, Huckabee rose swiftly through Arkansas politics, culminating with his decade-long stint as governor. But his career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office. Some of the ethics complaints deal with fairly penny ante stuff, and most were dismissed. They did, however, yield five admonitions and $1,000 in fines from Arkansas' Ethics Commission and, perhaps more significantly, a pattern that strategists for two competing GOP campaigns privately predict could become fodder for attacks playing on the culture-of-corruption theme Democrats used to pound Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections.

The ethics commission fined Huckabee $1,000 for failing to report that he paid himself $14,000 from his 1992 U.S. Senate campaign and $43,000 from his 1994 lieutenant governor's campaign. The latter payment — for the use of his eight-seat, twin-engine plane — was reported in a cryptic way that didn’t identify Huckabee and his wife as the owners of the plane.

According to Huckabee’s disclosure reports, he accepted more than 300 gifts worth at least $130,000, ranging from $3,700 cowboy boots to a $600 chainsaw and $250 worth of dental care. Plenty of politicians accept gifts of all sorts, but Huckabee had problems with Arkansas gift rules that bar public officials from accepting rewards for official action and require them to report the value and source of gifts.

In 1998, a former governor’s mansion employee and others sued Huckabee over his assertion that $70,000 worth of furniture donated to the governor's mansion was his to keep, as well as his family’s use of a $60,000-a-year fund. The fund had been used to pay for pizza, a doghouse, a magazine subscription and pantyhose for Huckabee’s wife, Janet, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. The suit was settled with Huckabee admitting no wrongdoing but acknowledging a "dispute regarding reimbursements” and making clear the furniture was for the mansion.

Before leaving office Jan. 9, Huckabee spent $13,000 in state funds to destroy the hard drives of nearly 100 computers in the governor’s office. He pointed out that he had backed up the data and argued that the hard drive destruction was standard practice to prevent the dissemination of sensitive information related to employees or constituents.