By now you’ve perhaps heard about a guy walking into a Seattle-area coffee shop on Sunday and shooting four cops, mafia execution style. As it turns out, the man suspected in the killings is a former Arkansas prison inmate released after former Governor Mike Huckabee granted him clemency in 1999, meaning that Huckabee, who previously caught heat during the most recent Republican presidential primary for also granting clemency to a serial rapist who went on to rape and murder a girl after his release, is pretty much dead in the water as a viable future presidential candidate.

Regardless of what you think of Huckabee politically, all of this is enormously sad, not only for the lives lost, but also because instances such as these are likely to make those with the power to grant clemency even more reluctant to do so in the future, making it even harder for people like Troy Davis to get out of prison for crimes they may have not committed. You kind of have to give the Huckster credit for sticking his neck out politically, especially being a conservative Republican, and trying to give a second chance to those he felt had been fucked over by the system and/or reformed during imprisonment, but in the end incidents such as this one mean that America’s already over-crowded prison system, already teaming with scores of young black men convicted on petty drug charges, will probably become even more bloated.

So again, you sort of have to tip your hat to Huckabee for having the courage to try, even though he obviously made some pretty horrific choices in regards to who he chose to grant clemency to.