Do you, the average Republican presidential primary voter, have any interest in knowing how Mike Huckabee spent his long career as Governor of Arkansas? He would be the frontrunner if he even bothers running, after all, and the public must know every terrible, terrible thing about him. For example: Was he picking weird fights with Natalie Portman back then, too? Perhaps you can think of some other questions. But they won't get answered, because Mike Huckabee cleaned and "physically destroyed" the hard drives of all his staff computers when he left office.

Mother Jones reports on what it tried to report on, but couldn't:

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

Well then!

Arkansas legend, however, tells of a supposed Secret Backup Hard Drive with all the goods. Perhaps now we'll have a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style quest to recover the ancient goods, rumored to be in the possession of a certain "Brenda" at the Christian card shoppe down the street:

The information stored on the drives had been saved on a backup, which was handed over to Huckabee's then-chief of staff, Brenda Turner. The history of the Huckabee administration, then, was locked away, under the watchful eye of a former aide. What did she do with this information? Where is it now? Turner, who now runs the PR shop for a Arkansas-based purveyor of Christian-themed greeting cards, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

We will buy at least three Christian cards in exchange for those records, Brenda. Surely that's the best offer you've ever fielded. Think it over.

[Image via AP]