Hotline After Dark -- World Of Hurt

by Rachelle Douillard-Proulx & Abby Livingston

"World News", "Evening News" and "Nightly News" led with Afghanistan.

Ex-AR Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) went on the "O'Reilly Factor" 11/30 to discuss the Tacoma, WA shootings and his role in the release of the suspect, Maurice Clemmons.

Huckabee, on the release of suspect Clemmons: "If I could have known nine years ago this guy was capable of something of this magnitude, obviously, I would never have granted a commutation. It's sickening. The two people in this country that I value the most are soldiers and police officers, because they're the only thing standing between our freedom and total anarchy."

More Huckabee: "And in the case of this particular individual, he was sentenced to 108 years for two crimes when he was 16. The post-prison transfer board, the process, and I'll be very brief about this, but to understand they recommended to me as governor for his commutation, which didn't release him, it simply cut his sentence to 47 years. That would give him parole eligibility. That was the commutation. I'm responsible for that, and it's not something I'm happy about this at this particular moment, in light of that."

After the jump, more Huckabee, reaction to Pres. Obama's Afghan decision and discussion on the WH State dinner party crashers.

FNC's O'Reilly: "Now, did you study it? Did you study it? Look, governors have a lot of this stuff."

Huckabee: "Yes."

O'Reilly: "Did you study this guy? Did you spend a lot of time on it, or did you just take the advice of your advisors?"

Huckabee: "No, I looked at every case file, and I had 1,200 of these a year. This is what people need to understand. Ninety-two percent of the
time they were denied. But in this case, the judge in the case was also recommending and the parole board on a 5-0 vote, because at the age of 16, the sentence he got for the crimes he committed back in 1989 was excessive for anything else that was in Arkansas."

Huckabee, on whether prosecutors warned him about Clemmons: "We didn't have any information from the prosecutors. We sent notices, which is the practice in Arkansas, to five different people: the attorney general, secretary of state, the prosecutor, the judge, and law enforcement. The only official that we have record of getting notification from is the judge who agreed with the recommendation of the parole board."

More Huckabee: "So that's what we acted upon, what I acted upon. I'm responsible for that. And my heart is broken for four families tonight" (FNC, 11/30).

ALL IN

Pols and pundits weighed in on Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY): "It is time to declare victory and come home. Should terrorism and terrorists resurface anywhere in the world, let alone Afghanistan, we'll take the actions that are necessary. Not with the force of occupation of over 100,000 American military personnel" ("Ed Show," MSNBC, 11/30).

New Yorker's Hertzberg, on whether adding troops to eventually get out is the right strategy: "Like a lot of people, I think I'm nervous about it because a lot of my instincts say this is a quagmire we shouldn't get into. But Obama ran on this. He's not saying anything different now than he said during the campaign. And I trust his good faith and the process he's gone through, really thinking hard about this. That's something new in the executive branch of the government and we should welcome it" ("CNN Tonight," CNN, 11/30).

FNC's Hume: "The best way to make a war work out politically is to succeed militarily. And if the president comes across in his speech as more worried about exit ramps and how to get out of Afghanistan as he is about trying to succeed in the mission over there, which he has previously called a necessary, vital to our national interests, then I think that impression of weakness will be furthered. And people and allies and enemies alike will all come to have further doubts about him" ("O'Reilly Factor," FNC, 11/30).

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), on what progressives should do: "What we always do, organize, organize, and organize. Tell the president, tell our elected representatives, and hope that we can build bridges among enough congressmen so that we can tell the president honestly that this war should be over. I've been following the polls and I've seen, in the case of Afghanistan, the polls are shifting. In the past year, more than 20% of Americans have changed their mind about the war in Afghanistan and conclude we shouldn't be there. And that's what we need to do. We need to change people's minds" ("Ed Show," MSNBC, 11/30).

CNN's Henry, on the speech: "The president is really going to try to focus on the endgame, to say that what he wants to do in this part of the mission, frankly, is to end it, that it went on, he believes, for about eight years with no strategy, no mission, and no real resources in place ... and it's going to be a tough call, but he wants to finally send enough resources to get the job done" ("Situation Room," 11/30).

YOU KNOW, ON THE FIRST ONE I CRASHED AND BURNED

Cable last p.m. focused on Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the VA couple/"Real Housewives of DC" hopefuls who crashed the 11/25 WH State Dinner.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), on whether he plans to investigate: "Yes, because I think we have to. I don't want to make this any kind of a circus. I don't want to make it a partisan event, but I think we have to, because I think, for the future, it's absolutely essential that the White House have staff there" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 11/30).

Author Ronald Kessler: "Really it comes down to, is Barack Obama going to take the proper action to protect his own life? Because the agents that I talked to say that there really is a risk of an assassination, giving all the short corners, all the corner cutting which led to this screw-up. The fact that the Secret Service has not been doing magnetometer screenings or they shut it down early is just shocking. It's like letting people into an airplane without going through metal detectors" ("Cambell Brown," CNN, 11/30).

Washington Post's Roberts, on discovering the situation when she was part of the press pool on the scene: "This couple walks through, and my head sort of shot up because I heard the name, and I looked at them and I thought to myself, Could it be? They looked exactly like this reality show couple, kind of sketchy, from Virginia, and it didn't make any sense to me. I looked down at my guest list, because we get official guest lists, and their names weren't on it" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 11/30).

Washington Post's Argetsinger, on the Salahis' alleged email correspondence with Pentagon official Michelle Jones: "Clearly ... the Salahis believe that their exchange with her was significant enough that it's going to demonstrate to the Secret Service that they didn't trespass, that they went there with good intentions" ("Campbell Brown," CNN, 11/30).

CNBC's Harwood: "The White House is embarrassed and upset over this incident, but I think they're counting this week on the rush of news to sort of carry them past this event. ... And as one senior administration official told me today, the president's been in a lot of meetings, making a lot of phone calls today. He hasn't been having meetings about this issue. He's been talking about Afghanistan and jobs and all the other stuff" ("Ed Show," MSNBC, 11/30).