Remember the story of Maurice Clemmons? He was a man that executed four Washington State police. Clemmons was essentially serving a life sentence in Louisiana for a series of burglaries, rape and a bunch of other nasty crimes. Well he was until then-governor, Mike Huckabee, decided to commute the sentence of Clemmons. After that he went to Washington and gunned down four police officers.

There’s a reason for this trip down memory lane. Tomorrow morning former Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty, is going to announce his run for the White House in 2012. Pawlenty, like his fellow Republican former governor Mike Huckabee, also has a problem with not taking crimes seriously (h/t Kos):

​Jeremy Giefer served time in jail in 1994 for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. But you wouldn’t know it to look at the record of the man now charged with sexually molesting his daughter more than 250 times over the last eight years.

That’s because two years ago, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Attorney General Lori Swanson, and then-Chief Justice Eric Magnuson unanimously voted to wipe Giefer’s record clean, granting him a pardon extraordinary.

One reason Giefer wanted his record cleared? His wife wanted to open a childcare center in the house where they live–the same house where Giefer allegedly molested his young daughter throughout the six years prior.

So what happened with Giefer? Well:

Flash forward to this month, when Giefer was charged with another sex crime, this time for allegedly molesting the daughter he conceived with the underage girl he statutory raped and married.

In fact, the complaint alleges, Giefer had been raping his daughter for about six years when Pawlenty granted him his extraordinary pardon.

According to the complaint filed in Blue Earth County Court, the girl, identified only as C.G., told Blue Earth detectives the sexual abuse started when she was nine years old.

So Pawlenty gave this man a very special pardon, just so that the man’s wife could open up a child care center next door, yet the guy was molesting his young daughter at the same time.

If this is the kind of judgement Tim Pawlenty exhibits, then do we really want him making the decisions that steers this country’s future? Do we trust his judgement when it comes to keeping us safe from terrorists, given the fact that his poor judgement could have easily lead to the terrorizing of numerous young children? I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t and I hope the media presses him hard on his very poor decision to pardon this man.