Who is Willie Horton?

Rush mentioned Willie Horton on his program today - or rather, mentioned a writer who had written an article called The Ghost of Willie Horton: Will The GOP Play the Race Card on Waters and Rangel?

It's interesting in one aspect - are Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters crooks, or are they not? If they are crooks, why does it matter what color they are - kick them out of office. Interestingly, according to Rush, the Congressional Black Caucus wants the Senate Ethics Committee shut down, because they're "targeting" black politicians. He said something about that two days ago, I'll address it in a different entry. But let us not forget that there are some white Republican politicians under investigation right now too for ethics violations, they just havent' reached the "investigation done, let's do something about these crooks" stage.

Anyway, here's who Willie Horton is, and what he did, and how what he did "took down" Michael Dukakis, thanks to an ad by George Bush.

From Wikipedia

William R. "Willie" Horton (born August 12, 1951) is an American convicted felon who, while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, was the beneficiary of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program. He did not return from his furlough, and ultimately he committed assault, armed robbery and rape. A political advertisement in support of the candidacy of George H.W. Bush during the 1988 U.S. Presidential race was critical of the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, for his support of the program.

Bush's campaign people spent millions of dollars on Willie Horton ads. Now, presumably David Weigel is saying that the Willie Horton ad was all about playing to the fears that whites had that blacks would be released from jail early and go about praying on them. Whereas it's more likely that it was just the fact that it was a convicted murderer who'd been released on a weekend furlough program that got people bent out of shape.

More info on this furlough program:

Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton's release, and while he did not start the furlough program, he had supported it as a method of criminal rehabilitation.

The State inmate furlough program was actually signed into law by Republican Governor Francis W. Sargent in 1972. However, under Sargent, convicted first-degree murderers were not eligible for furlough. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that this right extended to first-degree murderers, the Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates.

However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill. The program remained in effect through the intervening term of governor Edward J. King and was abolished during Dukakis' final term of office on April 28, 1988. This abolition only occurred after the Lawrence Eagle Tribune had run 175 stories about the furlough program and won a Pulitzer Prize. Dukakis continued to argue that the program was 99 percent effective; yet, as the Lawrence Eagle Tribune pointed out, no state outside of Massachusetts, nor any federal program, would grant a furlough to a prisoner serving life without parole.