Whlle the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page was giving Mike Huckabee prime Sunday real estate for his highly selective version of his departure from office, unfiltered by reporters, a columnist for a sister paper in Texarkana wasn’t so sanguine about the latest entrant in the race for president. A slice of Ethel Channon’s serious, but lively, column on Huckabee’s hard drive destruction:

For those of us in the public information business, this translates into using public money to destroy what more than a few would consider public information.

What would the governor and his staff be doing that would be inappropriate to leave on the computer for his constituents and his successor to see?

Given Huckabee’s vocation before politics, the ministry, I’m giving him and his staff the benefit of the doubt that they weren’t going places that might be embarrassing in a secular sort of way. No risque chat rooms or extended visits to fart.com.

No one would be very upset if Huckabee and company did a little online shopping or indulged an addiction to the computer game Free Cell.

Maybe some of the people working there were secret readers of or contributors to liberal blogs.

And, in conclusion:

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And I suspect that only in a banana republic—which is how Huckabee once described Arkansas—would such a blatant political ploy be tolerated—and paid for with public money.

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