This article out of Arkansas is astonishing. Compare it to Mitt Romney's record, who never pardoned a single criminal as governor.

If you're wondering how Gov. Huckabee's hundreds of clemencies compare with neighboring states, get ready for a shocker. Huckabee leads the pack. He has issued more commutations and pardons than all of the six neighboring states combined.

Governors seldom reduce sentences in other states – and almost never for murderers serving life without parole or for rapists or for habitual drunk drivers, while in Arkansas it's a regular habit with Huckabee. Other governors use their clemency power only rarely, while Huckabee has made it routine. As we've told you before, he has issued more than 700 pardons and commutations during his eight years in office – more than 137 this year alone – and more than his three predecessors combined. Here are the figures for neighboring states since 1996, when Huckabee took office (and keep in mind the population of these states is nearly 20 times ours):
>> Louisiana – 213.
>> Mississippi – 24.
>> Missouri – 79.
>> Oklahoma – 178.
>> Tennessee – 32.
>> Texas – 98 (in-cludes 36 inmates released because they were convicted on drug charges with planted evidence).

Total: 624 vs. Huckabee's 703.

Governors in neighboring states almost never grant killers clemency, while Huckabee has commuted the sentences of a dozen murderers. "That is extremely rare here," said one corrections official in a neighboring state. She recalled one case in the early 1990s when the governor commuted a killer's sentence and none since then. In Texas, we could find only one clemency case for a killer....

Is it any wonder that Arkansas prosecutors from both parties are upset with Huckabee, a Republican? Saline County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Herzfeld, a long-time critic of Huckabee's clemencies and a Democrat, said, "These facts de-monstrate that our governor has an extremely skewed approach to granting executive clemency. He seems to believe that granting clem-ency to murderers, rapists, drunk drivers and other convicted criminals is a part of the everyday affairs of the governor's office rather than something that he should approach cautiously and selectively. Executive clemency should be rare, and there should be very specific reasons."

Herzfeld continued, "Although he has promised to reform his clemency procedures because of tremendous public outrage these past few months, this governor has not promised to decrease the number of clemencies he grants. "Hopefully, when he sees these numbers, Gov. Huckabee will be shocked into reality, and come to understand that he is inexcusably out of sync with not only the people of Arkansas, but also his fellow governors," Herzfeld concluded.

When he was told about the clemencies in neighboring states, Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley, another Democrat, said, "They confirm my original instinct – that clemencies (in Arkansas) are used on a wholesale basis. The power of clemency is not being used in a circumspect and judicious fashion. I'm still dumbfounded looking at the numbers in the neighboring states."