After reading Huckabee's pronouncement I was moved to religious zeal.....

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Most likely, as McCain said about Obama, he is a "good man, a family man." I think he has run a campaign that could be described as win at any cost, no matter what lie or deceit has to be used. The black fellow who stood up and said, "please sir, I'm begging you" right before the little old lady, is anyone so dumb that they didn't recognize that man was planted? Many, many people can't see past the end of their nose.

I'm voting for LOU DOBBS for president. Seems he's about the only one these days who tells it like it is and fries both candidates.

it important to do so, so please move the link for this to the top too so we may see where the rebuttal '"facts" are verified. Though, it is obvious that most of this is editorian/rhetoric/whatever you want to call it.

To that end, I am so tired of the he said this, she said that. They ALL say one thing but mean another. They and their teams are all spinners. It is always a mystery because you never know what you are going to get when they get in there, especially since they are not the ones calling all the shots - there is congress too.

Here is Novak's recent article on him. Creepy. Reminds me a little of a wolf in sheep's clothing. I think it is important to get the opinions of those people in the districts politicians serve. Those opinions on Huckabee are not very good.

Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the motive force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is no doubt about Huckabee's record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he decided to lose 100 pounds and pressed his new lifestyle on the American people, he was far from a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax and has more recently signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit in normal boundaries of economic conservatism, as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed the cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of "growth" with "greed." Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute for his record as governor. On Fox News Sunday Nov. 18, he called the "tactics" of the Club for Growth "some of the most despicable in politics today. It's why I love to call them the Club for Greed because they won't tell you who gave their money." In fact, all contributors to the organization's political action committee (which produces campaign ads) are publicly revealed, as are most donors financing issue ads.

Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas journalist writing in the conservative American Spectator, called Huckabee "a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak." Huckabee's retort was to attack Hillyer's journalistic procedures, fitting a mean-spirited image when he responds to conservative criticism.

Nevertheless, he is getting remarkably warm reviews in the news media as the most humorous, entertaining and interesting GOP presidential hopeful. Contrary to descriptions by old associates, he is now called "jovial" or "good-natured." Any Republican who does not sound much like a Republican is bound to benefit from friendly media support, as Sen. John McCain did in 2000 but not today with his return to being more like a conventional Republican.

An uncompromising foe of abortion can never enjoy full media backing. But Mike Huckabee is getting enough favorable buzz that, when combined with his evangelical base, it makes real conservatives shudder.

I didn't agree with Mike Huckabee politically, but I always found him to be incredibly gracious and authentic. He had Coulter on his show (aptly followed by Jerry Springer, who ironically brought CIVILITY to the show.) and confronted her about the lies she published about HIM in her book.

If you scroll down the first page, you'll see the Springer segment. I believe when Huckabee referred to "authenticity" while speaking to Springer, he was referring to Coulter. At least, that's how it came across to me.

I didn't agree with Mike Huckabee politically, but I always found him to be incredibly gracious and authentic. He had Coulter on his show (aptly followed by Jerry Springer, who ironically brought CIVILITY to the show) and confronted her about the lies she published about HIM in her book.

(Almost five years after 9/11, just how committed is Bush to keeping Americans safe?)

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 11, 5:56 PM ET

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course, Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security, the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.

Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short.

They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using, Sabo said.

Homeland Security said Friday its research arm has just gotten a new leader, former Navy research chief Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, and there is strong optimism for developing new detection technologies in the future.

I don't have any criticisms of anyone, said Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary for transportation security. I have great hope for the future. There is tremendous intensity on this issue among the senior management of this department to make this area a strength.

Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department's research and development effort is bogged down by bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely.

The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights was to involve liquid explosives.

Hawley said Homeland Security now is going to test the detector in six American airports. It is very promising technology and we are extremely interested in it to help us operationally in the next several years, he said.

Japan has been using the liquid explosive detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo and demonstrated the technology to U.S. officials at a conference in January, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said.

Homeland Security is spending a total of $732 million this year on various explosives deterrents and has tested several commercial liquid explosive detectors over the past few years but hasn't been satisfied enough with the results to deploy them.

Hawley said current liquid detectors that can scan only individual containers aren't suitable for wide deployment because they would bring security check lines to a crawl.

For more than four years, officials inside Homeland Security also have debated whether to deploy smaller trace explosive detectors � already in most American airports � to foreign airports to help stop any bomb chemicals or devices from making it onto U.S.-destined flights.

A 2002 Homeland report recommended immediate deployment of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in his attack in December 2001.

A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively, and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions.

Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security's explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.

It is not that expensive, said Fainberg, who retired recently. There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn't deploy it.

Fainberg said research efforts were often frustrated inside Homeland Security by bureaucratic games, a lack of strategic goals and months-long delays in distributing money Congress had already approved.

There has not been a focused and coherent strategic plan for defining what we need ... and then matching the research and development plans to that overall strategy, he said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners, like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.

It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats, he said.

The administration's most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T's 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.

Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the top two lawmakers for Senate homeland appropriations, rejected the idea shortly after it arrived late last month, Senate leadership officials said.

Their House counterparts, Reps. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Sabo, likewise rejected the request in recent days, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Brost said. Homeland said Friday it won't divert the money.

___

Associated Press writer Leslie Miller contributed to this story.

I'm referring to posts on the conservative political board under the post about Michelle Malkin.

Someone who believes that a fetus is a human being? Your label "religious wacko" is very disrespectful and unkind. I am pro-life and I am not mentally unstable.