“Politics at its worst.” That’s what a Washington Post editorial calls the tussle between Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani over a judge’s release of an accused murderer. After a newlywed couple were shot to death last week in Washington state, police arrested Daniel Tavares Jr., who had just completed a 16-year prison term in Massachusetts for killing his mother. The Post says the case has become “grotesque fodder” in the campaign. Romney called for the resignation of the judge, who he had appointed to the bench, for releasing Tavares. The Post says “Romney’s facts are wrong. The record shows that Judge [Kathe] Tuttman merely followed the law.”
The prosecutor had not called for a required “dangerousness hearing” to determine whether Tavares should be held, so Tuttman released Tavares without bail. The Post says that perhaps worse than Romney’s “craven attack” on Tuttman was Giuliani’s response. Sensing his opponent’s vulnerability, he almost gleefully seized on the matter. “The governor is going to have to explain his appointment, and the judge is going to have to explain her decision,” Giuliani said, before claiming that crime rose in Massachusetts during Romney’s tenure. The newspaper concludes that Romney and Giuliani apparently can think only about “their own skins and how best to spin these events.”
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112702172.html