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Where Civil Liberties Go to Die
The Donald Did His Best Impression of Il Duce in North Carolina
Trivia question: Who was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the election George H. W. Bush won?
You might be forgiven missing such a trivial historical detail, but you can bet it’s one of the few history questions President Donald J. Trump can answer. He will never forget William R. Horton, and that’s why he’s cuing up a race against Horton times four.
Mr. Horton was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in Massachusetts. His running mate, Gov. Michael Dukakis, got hammered for Mr. Horton’s participation in a weekend furlough program, from which he ran away to Maryland, where he raped a woman twice, after taking care of her boyfriend by pistol-whipping, stabbing, tying him up and stealing his car. Horton was captured by a Prince George’s County policeman named Yusuf Muhammad, who had not been sent back where he came from because Trump was not yet president.
Mr. Dukakis was responsible for Mr. Horton’s depredations in spite of the furlough program having been signed into law by Republican Gov. Francis Sargent on the “captain of the ship” theory. An executive claims credit for the good things that happen on his watch without regard to whether he caused them; therefore, the same executive should catch the blame for any bad…
