Arkansas does have some very interesting political characters, doesn't it? Especially that little town of Hope, home to Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee.

There is a fascinating story about Huckabee now just circulating that is threatening to derail his presidential campaign.

The story goes like this. A man named Wayne Dumond raped a 17-year-old cheerleader and distant cousin of Bill Clinton and was given a life sentence. The right wing noise machine jumped on this issue claiming that Dumond was an innocent victim of the Clinton political machine.

The Clinton haters managed to convince then newly elected Arkansas Gov. Huckabee, who formally stated his intention to commute Dumond's sentence in 1996. Public outcry ensued from Dumond's victims. So Huckabee got the parole board to release Dumond just days before the law required Huckabee to make his decision on commutation, thus deflecting some of the heat.

This "innocent man" Dumond went on to rape and murder a Missouri woman, and was about to be charged with raping and murdering another woman when he died in prison in 2005.

Huckabee is desperately trying to spin this off, and rewriting documented history to do so. He's trying to claim that he didn't put any pressure on the parole board, and that he didn't lobby on behalf of Dumond.

There are more crooked twists in this story than an Ozark mountain road. Read it for yourself. Here is a great piece by Murray Waas about all the recent revelations, and his original reporting for the Arkansas Times.