Fred on Laura Ingram

Fred was on the Laura Ingram show today (audio available here. It was an interesting interview. I want to start with the end. Laura referenced Huckabee's "Christmas Card" ad and wanted to know if Fred was going to have a similar Christmas message. His response:

"Yeah. It's kind of a sweet personal thing. It's gonna be 'Vote Fred'"

I love it.

On the more serious side, Laura brought up the case of the two border guards who were convicted of various crimes and are currently in jail. She wants to know if Fred was would pardon these two. Now I have heard Fred talk about this before--I thought on Laura's show, but maybe not. Fred's response (as it has always been) was that he has not seen all of the information, but from what he has read in the papers he believes that their case would merit commutation of their sentence to time served rather than a pardon. Fred believes that they were charged with the wrong things, but that they had committed crimes and correctly found guilty of certain activities.

I have heard Laura talk about this case before and she obviously feels very strongly about it. But in the limited accounts that I have read, I was convinced that the two clearly did some things wrong and should have been punished. But I, like Fred, think that they paid that debt a long time ago and should now be freed. I am glad that Fred thinks so much of the process of pardons and commutations that he treats them seriously. This is in amazing contrast to Huckabee's issuance of over 1,000 pardons and commutations often to people who were not deserving and at least one based on the fact that the family donated to the Arkansas GOP.