I was reading Sandy Rios' excellent article supporting Mike Huckabee - A Candidate We Could Get Excited About—if Only the Pundits Would Let Us - and she makes a good point about the argument that Huckabee pardoned over a thousand criminals while governor of Arkansas, including one man who went on to commit murder.

At least he was willing to make the tough decisions, evaluating every one of the 8000 requests for pardon that came across his desk. Maybe he got some wrong, but that's why our judicial system is based upon the idea of "reasonable doubt" — as a society, we agree that it's better to have a few more guilty people walk free, than to put an innocent man behind bars.

In addition, it bears repeating that Romney was more concerned about his shallow record of "no pardons issued." Romney's hometown paper, the Boston Globe, explains it:

Anthony Circosta, a decorated Iraq War veteran from Agawam, needed a gun permit in Massachusetts to get a promotion at his security guard job and to pursue a possible career as a police officer. But first he needed to have his record cleared of a childhood felony - shooting a classmate in the shoulder with a BB gun when he was 13.

The Massachusetts clemency board investigated Circosta's case and twice recommended pardoning him. But then-Governor Mitt Romney refused, preserving a record of rejecting every clemency request that crossed his desk.

That is a perfect example of putting ambition before principle — the primary reason people don't like Mitt Romney.

I recommend Mike Huckabee — a true conservative.