If you're curious why Mike Huckabee even got on the topic of pardoning, commuting the sentence of, paroling -- whatever -- serial rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond, you have to understand that during the 90s the right-wing whackjobosphere had managed to convince themselves that DuMond was some sort of Ozarks Ruben Carter -- a victim of Bill Clinton and the corrupt regime he ran in Arkansas in the 1980s.

Most of our staff at TPM are in their twenties. And we had a moment today when it occurred to me that if you weren't politically aware in the 1990s, it's difficult to get a sense of how much a series of seriously deranged conspiracy theories became almost mainstream.

In any case, there's actually a book, Unequal Justice, that seems to be the bible of DuMond lionization and hagiography. What's so damning about Huckabee is that whatever version of events you believe, it seems undisputed that Huckabee either bought into this craziness or pushed for the release of a serial rapist to pander to those who did.