While We Weren't Watching

So busy have we been tracking the Obama/Clinton race that we haven't really been tracking the GOP returns. It turns out that even though McCain long ago got the delegates he needs, there's some interesting stuff in those overlooked stats. Andrew Malcolm at Top of the Ticket fills us in:

In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who've each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%.

On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%.

Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP's presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%).

Either of the Dem candidates would kill for 73% of the vote, but for McCain, his inability to command the Dem vote so long after he won the nomination shows that there could be considerable trouble ahead, first at the convention, then in the General.

Malcolm's column focuses on a possible convention fight from Ron Paul's supporters:

The last three months Paul's forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upwards of one million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates. ...

They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a longterm revolution for control of the Republican Party.

So eager are they to follow their leader's words, that Paul's supporters have driven his new book, "The Revolution: A Manifesto," to the top of several bestseller lists.

Still, all the nastiness the Paulites could possible foist on the convention will pale by comparison to what the Clinton faction could do to Obama. The Paulites are taking the long-term view, determined to hang in there until the GOP becomes fiscally conservative and isolationist. A mixed bag there.

Short term, as in now through 2012, there may be more to worry about from the Huckabee set.

Huckabee has professed never-ending allegiance to McCain (at least for this race), but in a piece I really didn't like much because of its paranoid and bizarre tone about Christians, Robert Novak spells out a cultish scenario, in which Obama is a biblical curse and Huckabee God's choice for 2012:

One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

Novak doesn't report that droves of Christians will vote Obama to bring on the plague; in fact, he reports that Farris has said he would never vote for either Obama or Clinton. But they will be at the convention to push the Christian right agenda.

The media is playing up this story in part because the Dem race as slid into a boring period, like the final rounds of a heavyweight match, with the opponents leaning into each other, landing tired body punches, and in part because any McCain news is news.

But it seems to me that it will play out primarily in the arcane affair of drafting the platform, and that's not at all a bad thing. McCain's platform could use a commitment to fiscal conservatives and strict constructionist judges, and little more than that is likely to come out of the battle.

Now what I'd really like to see is a bunch of stories speculating on what the Dem convention is likely to be like.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Sexual Hysteria Over Huckabee

My readers know that even though I'm a conservative Christian, I'm no Huckabee huckster. Even so, I found this charge at TPM Election Central utterly (udderly?) ridiculous:

Huck, in elaborating on his views that the Constitution should be subjected to Biblical standards, had just wrapped up a discussion of the fact that marriage has meant "a man and a woman in a relationship for life." With this context firmly established, this exchange followed:

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.

HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

That's pretty clear cut. Changing the definition of marriage so it can mean "two men" or "two women" is equivalent to changing it to mean "a man and an animal." No ambiguity here whatsoever.

Based on this, TPM trumpets that Huckabee "directly equated homosexuality with bestiality."

You would think that the writer, Greg Sargent, has never heard of the concept of "slippery slope."

Huckabee's statement is one oft used by marriage defenders, who worry that once you allow two men or two women to marry, it won't be long until one man and two women or one man and one boy start pushing the courts for the same coverage. Given American courts' propensity to write new liberal law, the argument can easily go to bestiality without too extreme a rhetorical leap.

Well, in fact Sargent has heard of the "slippery slope," since he ends the post with:

Separately, it's worth pointing out that Huck's quote above doesn't even use the tried-and-true "slippery slope" argument to couch his view that homosexuality is akin to bestiality. It's a direct equivalence.

Must every candidate statement be footnoted and parenthesis-ized to present all relevant background? That seems too tall a test by a factor of a bunch of numbers. besides, Sargent analysis is utterly oblique. Here's Huck again:

I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again.

Note the logical progression, coincidentally exactly as I laid it out above (other than the polygamist gets three women instead of two), and I wasn't cross-checking. As if that did not define a slippery slope well enough, Huck added that the law would "open the door to change [the definition] again." That is what we mean when we say slippery slope.

You open the door, and there before you is a slippery slope.

Sargent is showing the common anti-Born Again prejudice in his extreme and inflammatory interpretation of Huckabee's position. So here's a slippery slope argument for him: If we allow you to open your door to redefining marriage, the next move will be to accept the Left's opening the door to banning un-multicultural thought and speech.

But if that happens, it will be the Right that is prosecuted for their thoughts, not the Left, so Sargent feels free to fling the door open to his hearts content, because he has no fear of the slope he will slide down.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Sunday Scan

Saul Alinsky's Playbook

What do you make of a quote like this, from Mike Huckabee?

"Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives ... were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party."

As a Christian social conservative, I think it's just not true, since there are a lot of conservative Christians in the GOP in positions of authority. President Bush, for example. At NRO, Mark Levin feels the same way, and has found the right way to put it:

Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee's tactics and candidacy so deplorable.

In the primaries, we are not voting for who we want to win our local primary; we are voting for who we think should be our next president. That's why Huckabee is not even on the margins of my consideration for the Cal primary.

As much as I wish Huckabee was the pastor of my church, were he just a pastor, I wouldn't have him as the pastor of my church, given the dishonorable way he's running his campaign. (hat-tip: memeorandum)

France Offers Atoms To Arabs

Give 'em an inch of nuclear technology, M. Sarkozy, and they just might take a mile.

Nicolas Sarkozy might be a Bush ally of sorts -- after all, he's touring the Middle East at the same time W. is -- but he has that cavalier Gallic attitude about selling nuclear technology. If it brings money to France, how bad can it be? Read this from BBC and ponder:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a Gulf tour, during which he is due to sign an nuclear co-operation deal with the United Arab Emirates.

He has arrived in Saudi Arabia and will go on to Qatar and the UAE over the next three days. All three are seeking to develop civilian nuclear programmes.

Mr Sarkozy has said the Arab world should have the same rights to such programmes as other states.

France has already signed nuclear agreements with Algeria and Libya.

Mr Sarkozy said the sale of such technology could foster trust between the West and the Muslim world.

Or a terrifying thermonuclear nightmare of obliterating consequences. Your choice.

But if that's the way it's going to be, then any nation threated by the thought of Sunni theocracies having nuclear power -- be it bombs or reactors -- should also have it. Ethiopia, the Balkan states, Central African states like Kenya and the Congo Republic.

Fine and dandy. Atoms for all. But just this, Nicolas, mon ami, the first time one of 'em screws with an inspection, the whole program must be withdrawn and their facilities destroyed. No more Irans, no more North Koreas.

All That Glitters

Here's a long list of celebrity contributions to political campaigns. Yes, folks, it's true: Movie stars like Obama best. The contribution edge over Dem runner-up Clinton includes such glitterati as Jennifer Aniston, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry, George Clooney, Larry David, Morgan Freeman, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Shields.

Almost completely, black entertainers are lined up behind Obama. Starlets overwhelmingly put race ahead of gender ... you don't really think they're poring over the issues with the intensity they pore over scripts, do you? Exceptions (not counting those who contribute to multiple campaigns) are: Quincy Jones (Clinton) and ... oh, that's it; Quincy Jones.

GOP donors? Well, that's pretty easy: Pat Boone (Brownback and Romney), Jerry Bruckheimer (McCain, natch), and Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein, all for Giuliani.

It's not at all curious that the most curious contributor was SNL major domo Lorne Michaels, who gave $4,600 to Dodd and $2,300 to McCain. I'm trying to figure that one out.

Now Be Nice!

Sacramento, like many cities around the country, is facing fiscal hard times: Budget shortfall, huge and costly infrastructure needs and various local controversies that are stymieing the city's vision and future.

So here's what Sacto mayor Heather Fargo said in a State of the Downtown speech:

We each need to change one light bulb to a compact fluorescent because it's good for the environment. Oh, and be sure to walk more and drink tap water to promote a "green Sacramento."

If politicians think Greenie platitudes will fix anything, they should ready themselves for legions of voters who are green around the gills with Greenie platitudes. Or, as SacBee columnist Marcos Breton put it:

There is no political risk in promoting the idea of a "Green Sacramento." It's like saying we should all be nice to each other.

Ouch. Breton is right on here, but way off course here:

When you have a room full of large-scale developers, as Fargo did, why not use your pulpit to educate them on how "green" building materials can be cost-effective too? Why not show them that they can still make their money and build projects that are better for the environment?

The arrogant little pencil-chewing twit! Who knows more about the economics and benefits of green development than builders? They started the movement in the 1970 energy crisis, putting their existing and planned buldings through rigorous energy audits and investing in more energy technologies that would pay for themselves.

Who do you think has saved more energy in the last couple decades, free market building owners who are seeking lower costs, or power-hungry bureaucrats who are seeking to force their view of reality on the world? Of course, a newspaper columnist, so far removed from reality, would wrongly think the latter.

Curses, Foiled Again!

Fars, the Iranian Propaganda Ministry news service, is not a trustworthy news source to put it mildly, so I'll give US fencer Ivan Lee the benefit of the doubt, but hardly a pass, on the comments he made while participating in a fencing competition in Iran recently. According to Fars, here's what Lee said:

"If the Iranian people and government posed a problem (for us), the US fencing team would never take a second trip to Iran," Ivan Lee, who is currently in Iran to attend the 2008 International Fencing Competitions in Iran's Persian Gulf island of Kish, told FNA on Sunday.

"Everyone analyzes issues by using his own mind and logic; we know that all the negative propaganda against Iran is unreal and, thus, we attended Iran's international competitions for a second time," he said.

Feint is the word, Ivan, feint. The Iranians showed you something that wasn't real in order to make you miss what was real. Anyone who thinks for a moment that a repressive, totalitarian regime would let any visit get a brush with reality has had one too many épée hits on the cognitive organ. (Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Lee is a saber fencer, but épée is such a cooler word.)

And Now From The Euro-Libs

It's not enough that some SCOTUS members think it's just fine to cite European Community law in their American legal decisions. Now Euro-Libs are asking for the right to vote in US elections. From an editorial in the Brussels rag De Standard, courtesy of Brussels Journal:

American presidential elections are not “home affairs.” American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.

Hence, the world should be given the right to vote. Because the current situation is a blatant case of taxation without representation, against which the Americans rebelled in 1776.

Never mind that Brussels would be a Nazi nation were it not for decisions we Americans made as part of our "home affairs" sixty years ago; Europe can do no harm. It does not pollute, it does not have financial woes, it has never seen its currencies falter. Its efforts to impose a multicultural political mindset on the planet, and to spend our way out of the alleged human causes of global warming does not, apparently, also represent taxation without representation.

Did we have a say in any of that foolishness? Not that I recall. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

A Chair By Any Other Name

The must-read read of the day is Armando Iannucci's column in The Guardian on Barack Obama and American politics. By the time you read this, at the beginning of the third paragraph ...

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it's because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere.

... you'll be hooked.

Iannucci does a lovely spoof on Obama-speak by suggesting that this is how Obama would rhetoric to death a chair:

'This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl's behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America's huddled arse.'

The problem with Obama and all our politicians is that that's enough; one must never bother with the harsh facts of what you're actually going to do about the chair, or be brave enough to say nothing needs to be done by government about the chair; one only has to stir the feeling of "chair" that's in all of us.

I can share two more lovely lines from the essay without giving away too much of your future enjoyment of it:

American politicians take time out from their busy lives to makes speeches that sound empty; British politicians fill the emptiness of their lives with words that make them sound busy.

And

The chair, by the way, was made in China.

We're All Gonna Die!

And I'll be 40,000,057 years old when it happens, according to this report in Science Daily.

Well, actually, that will be when Smith's Cloud impacts the Milky Way (the pink burst in the image above). Our sun is noted a bit to the right, so I'll probably have a few more years to spend with the grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grandkids.

Smith's cloud, which if flush with hydrogen (enough to fire up a million suns), is a bit bigger than a puff in the sky: eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. It's 8,000 light years away and is rushing at us at 150 miles per second (a tad faster than my German V8).

And that's something that's close to us. No wonder SciFi writers have to invent hyperspace and worm holes to get their heroes from here to there.

It's really too bad we won't be around when Smith's Cloud hits, since this is what it'll look like, according to astronomer Felix Lockman:

When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy.

Shoot. It'll be a real shame to miss that!

Kristol Kicks Off NYT Column

"Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration," wrote William Kristol today in his first N YT column. I can see the jaws drop all over the Upper East Side

"We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state," he continued, "we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq." Yes, NYT readers, there really are people out here west of the Hudson who feel that way. A lot of us.

Kristol's column will be a periodic thorn in the side of most NYT readers, who will be like inveterate speeders having to attend traffic school. They'll get lessons they don't want to get, but lessons that are nonetheless good, even life-saving, for them.

The subject of Kristol's writing today is Mike Huckabee, who he extols, but not to the point of endorsing him. He posits that Huckabee could win a match-up with Obama and points out that a Huckabee/Obama race is the one most likely to bring Bloomberg into the race, to the detriment of Obama.

In the end, he notes that Republicans spent most of 2007 underestimating Huckabee, and that the Dems may spend 2008 doing the same thing. Interestingly, that's exactly what NYT readers have been doing with conservatives -- underestimating our intelligence, our positions and our potential. Now that Kristol's in the hen house, it may just start to dawn on them that their underestimating has been "misunderestimating."

Or, more likely, they'll just go on being mad at Kristol, and at us, for daring to bring such stuff up.

Sunday Scan

SoCal's Own Fruit And Nut

Adam Gadahn, born of OC, raised by hippie parents on a goat farm in the hills of Riverside County, gives us such pride. Not. He is, of course, al-Qaeda's American mouthpiece, and he's released another screed against the country that raised him:

"We felt it necessary to address the American people and explain to them some of the facts about these critical and fast-moving events. The first questions Americans might ask is has America really been defeated? The answer is yes and on all fronts."

If we're so defeated, I wonder why Gadahn feels compelled to say this:

Meanwhile, the occupied territories are awaiting their first visit by the Crusader Bush, and the mujahadeen are also waiting. [He switches here from English to Arabic, and leans into the camera.] At this point I issue an urgent call to our mujahadeen brothers in Muslim Palestine, and in the Arabian Peninsula in particular and all the region in general.

They should be in full readiness to receive the crusader arch-killer Bush in his visit to Muslim Palestine and to the occupied Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of January. They should receive him not with roses and applause, but with bombs and booby-traps.

He then proceeds to destroy his American passport. Good riddance, traitor.

The story of how a Jewish boy from SoCal could have become the hate-filled mouthpiece of al-Qaeda should be a lesson on the consequences of even gushy liberalism and its anti-establishment bent and ingrained distrust and hatred of America.

The only difference between Adam Gadahn and thousands of kids raised by very liberal parents is that Gadahn started attending a mosque, just as John Walker Lindh did.

For an in-depth three-part biography of Gadahn, his Jewish grandparents, hippie parents and Muslim conversion, here, here and here are links to my overviews, each of which includes links to the three parts of the article.

Czech Artists' Joke Bombs

They say you can't be an artist if you haven't suffered. Will three years in a Czech jail suffice?

Last June, anyone watching a certain Czech weather channel at the right moment saw a panning shot of the countryside near the Krkonose, or Giant Mountains, in Bohemia, when a yellow flash filled their screens and a skinny mushroom cloud lifted in the distance.

It was a hoax. A Czech artists' group had inserted the explosion digitally. A state prosecutor said on Thursday that six members of the group will now have to stand trial for the hack. They could face up to three years in jail. (Spiegel)

The artists wanted to make the point that it was easy to hack into broadcast computer systems -- a curious new form of art, eh?

Here are the two sides of the argument. First, the artists:

"We are neither a terrorist organization nor a political group," a statement by Ztohoven said. "Our aim is not to intimidate society or manipulate it, which is something we witness on a daily basis both in the real world and that created by the media. On June 17 2007, [we] attacked the space of TV broadcasting, distorting it, questioning its truthfulness and its credibility."

And the accuser:

No one was hurt, but a spokesman for Czech Television said, according to the UK's Guardian newspaper, "The fake broadcast was really very inadvisable and could have provoked panic among a wide group of people."

True, but I like Ztohoven's point about media manipulation more.

Saaskavili Vote Revisited

Here's what Speigel has to say about Mikhail Saaskavili's apparent victory in yesterday's presidential elections in Georgia:

President Mikhail Saakashvili wants to be re-elected in Georgia on Saturday -- after violent crackdowns on the opposition. This ally of the West is looking more and more like a dictator, with opponents arrested, beaten or sent into exile, and accusations of vote-rigging from critics inside Georgia and abroad.

Georgia, as I mentioned Friday, sits in one of the world's most strategic pieces of real estate. Both Saakashvili and his opposition support ties with the West and staying outside the sphere of Russia, but the government's crushing of opposition last summer has raised fears (including my own) that the U.S. may be getting back to the "Yeah, he's a dictator, but he's our dictator" school of diplomacy.

Last November, Daniel Fried, our Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, said in Tbilisi:

[W]e are all here because Georgia is on the frontiers of freedom. Frontiers of freedom began in Poland in 1989 and those frontiers have advanced. This is where the link between freedom and security is being made; where democratic institutions are being built.

Freedom is not a luxury that one looks to achieve as an afterthought. The 21^st century faces many challenges-terrorism, the proliferation of unconventional weapons and energy dependence are three important ones. The response, however, to these problems will be found through the expansion of democracy, of free markets, the rule of law, and the willingness to defend them. These values in turn make the resolution of these problems easier.

Georgia has taken strides in all these areas already. Georgians must know that the world is aware of and appreciates their progress.

Georgia's strong progress should not mask the progress yet needed. Georgia's ultimate fate is still to be determined. Much depends on the decisions Georgians and their leaders take in years to come. I can outline an American perspective on the issues at stake. To start, let me quickly deal with a couple of questions where easy answers are in fact available.

A bit of a wrist-slap there -- and a slap State should re-visit in the wake of the election, as opposition demonstrations broke out in Georgia's capital declaring the election results to be fraudulent.

Georgia is doing OK, but just OK, and Saaskavili has become problematic. He's too valuable an ally to lose, but he needs to face continuing pressure to reinstitute support for Democratic reforms, even as he receives our support.

BBC reports the elections appear to have been fair, but the opposition says not. That tees up State's first challenge following the election.

"A Cosmic Clock Being Reset"

Thomas P.M. Barnett writes that the seventh year of the Bush administration forces a reassessment of the entire Bush presidency:

The White House's recent policy reversals amount to a stunning repudiation of the first seven years of George W. Bush's presidency. Where allies were previously disrespected, now they're viewed as essential. Where diplomacy was eschewed, now it's pursued with vigor. No longer running the government from his base, George W. Bush finally tries to lead the entire nation.

Bush's political opponents detect weakness and regret and a last-ditch attempt to salvage legacy, while supporters point to a self-professed dissident leader extending a freedom agenda in his final months. Both perspectives hold much truth.

But, as someone who's worked extensively throughout the national security community across this administration, both inside and outside government, I am struck by how the world seems to be returning to its pre-9/11 correlation of forces, like a cosmic clock being reset. It's almost as if the sum total effect of the second Bush term will be to repair the damage caused by the first.

Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map, supported John Kerry in 2004 because he felt that Kerry would be more able to readily refocus on the broader, global issues that require cooperation between nations. Now Bush has reached that view and all that has been lost in the last few years is "time and opportunity, our most precious assets."

I would argue that national security is our most precious asset, and support Bush for a unilateralism that many can't forgive him for. But I agree with Barnett that the War on Terror has progressed enough that we can begin focusing more on other global issues, and my own support for Bush has increased in the last year, as the war in Iraq has been fought more intelligently, and diplomacy has improved.

The $400 Million Bail

War profiteer and greed-meister David Brooks is out on bail -- but my oh my, what a bail!

• A $400 million bond, which Brooks secured with $48 million in pledged assets.
• Monitoring of all communications, including Internet, excluding attorney-client privileged communications.
• Brooks funding of private guards authorized to use force to if necessary to restrain Brooks

Those are terms that would make a Mafia godfather shake his head in awe.

Brooks is the founder of DHB Industries, which manufactures bulletproof vests for U.S. troops in Iraq and cops here at home. The charges against him aren't for war profiteering -- a common complaint against him since he sells high priced, often defective products to the military -- but because he allegedly defrauded shareholders by overstating profits.

The Blotter explains the strict terms:

In large part, the terms, dubbed "bulletproof," by one senior law enforcement official, are so severe because Brooks' wealth and alleged blatant flaunting of the law make him a far larger flight risk than these and many other defendants, two federal officials said.

Brooks gained a bit of notoriety when he dropped $10 mil on his daughters bat mitzvah and another $10 mil on a diamond. Sounds like a lovely man.

No Further Debate Update

We all know the global warming debate is over and that changes in ocean temperature are caused by nothing more than the nasty emissions of SUVs, power plants and factories, but I thought I'd pass this along nonetheless:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2008) — A Duke University-led analysis of available records shows that while the North Atlantic Ocean's surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the change was not uniform. In fact, the subpolar regions cooled at the same time that subtropical and tropical waters warmed.

This striking pattern can be explained largely by the influence of a natural and cyclical wind circulation pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), wrote authors of a study published Jan. 3, in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

Wind!? How are you going to build a user tax and fund a global bureaucracy on wind, for cryin' out loud?

Oh, My!

clipped from www.dailykos.com

Spitting On Returning Troops Update

Our troops have been treated pretty well, all in all. The American Left apparently has cut through their muddled cloudiness that is their brains on Liberalism and determined that spitting on returning troops is not always a good idea.

But in Britain (which, as you know -- unless, perhaps, you're one of the people interviewed in the clip above -- is a part of that advanced Liberal nirvana called Europe), the troops are not doing as well:

Scores of soldiers flying home from Afghanistan on Christmas leave were ordered to change out of their uniforms on a freezing runway before being allowed into a civilian airport terminal.

Troops were told not to be seen in public in their uniforms - which they had worn with pride while risking their lives during months of intense fighting against the Taliban.

Last night the Ministry of Defence and bosses at Birmingham International Airport blamed each other for the indignity suffered by the soldiers - which comes amid mounting anger over the treatment of British troops returning from war.

One soldier, who was ordered to undress for "security reasons", said: "It is an insult to the entire Army to force guys who've been fighting in Afghanistan to obey some jobsworth rule when all they want to do is get home to their families.

"So much for a nation proud of its servicemen. The temperature was Baltic on the runway but most of just wanted to get home so we cracked on."

The December 23 flight, carrying 200 personnel, had been diverted from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to Birmingham because of bad weather.

The troops were told they could either wait for coaches to take them back to Brize Norton or else travel home via public transport - in which case they must change into civilian clothes before entering the terminal. (Daily Mail)

The Brit's Department of Defensed shuched and jived to come up with an excuse that I won't bother to even pass on, but I liked this quote from Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, a former infantry commander:

"This is just the sort of thing that gets seriously up the noses of fighting troops."

Indeed it does. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

McCain Gaffe? What Gaffe?

clipped from talkingpointsmemo.com

The Token Dem says this McCain gaffe -- in which he responds to a question about troops in Iraq for 50 years by saying, "Why not 100 years?" -- may have critically injured the McCain campaign.

I don't see the gaffe because there's a qualifier, paraphrased as: "as long as America's fighting forces are not harmed or killed." At least in large, ongoing numbers. If you use Korea, Europe and Japan as an example, I think the evidence is overwhelming that our long-term presence has been a stabilizing factor.

Of course, his point of view is what makes him the Token Dem, and McCain won't be much of a cross-over vote-getter.

McCain's frankness and sheer inability to say something other than what he believes, no matter how much run-of-the-mill political consultants may urge otherwise, will appeal to many of us who don't like ... what's the word? Huckersterism.

Candidates' Response to Bhutto Assassination

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto presented a pop quiz for the candidates on the subjects of foreign policy and "acting presidential." Here are their grades, starting with the key Dems:

Hillary Clinton: B. Worthy of an A was Hillary's quick, thorough and strong response, post on her Web site. But a big negative was Clinton's continued deceitful grandstanding on her relationship with Bhutto.

Her website promptly posted a lengthy statement on the assassination in the form of a Wolf Blitzer interview and summarized her position as follows:

... Hillary Clinton outlined five steps she believes must be taken to address Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Clinton called for an independent, international investigation, reiterated the need for free and fair elections, proposed the appointment of a special envoy, discussed revamping U.S. foreign aid, and a renewed commitment to a stabilized India-Pakistan relationship.

Her call for an independent international investigation was politically astute for a Dem, but problematic. The Rafiki assissination investigation in Lebanon has gone on interminably, and has yet to yield an indictment; the course of events in Pakistan is likely to sweep by such a lengthy investigation. Further, it would have been diplomatically more tactful to call on Musharraf to conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation and suggest that he request the assistance of Interpol and others.

Barack Obama: F. His Web site reveals only a brief statement that is cursory, revealing neither depth of analysis nor understanding of the complexities:

"I am shocked and saddened by the death of Benazir Bhutto in this terrorist atrocity. She was a respected and resilient advocate for the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people. We join with them in mourning her loss, and stand with them in their quest for democracy and against the terrorists who threaten the common security of the world."

WaPo found just how abysmal Obama's response was:

Then Mr. Obama committed his foul -- a far-fetched attempt to connect the killing of Ms. Bhutto with Ms. Clinton's vote on the war in Iraq. After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."

It's not unexpected for a politician to respond to news politically, but low-blowing Hillary is not the response the American public wants when critical issues burst forth in the War on Terror, putting peace and the lives of our soldiers at greater risk.

John Edwards. A. His Web site statement is brief and quick to condemn Bush:

Benazir Bhutton [a big, nasty sic], the former Prime Minister of Pakistan was assassinated a number of hours ago. Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister, was right when he said it was a tragedy for her party and Pakistan. I submit that it is also a tragedy for the whole world and another powerful symbol of the total failure of the President's Global War on Terror.

Since bashing Bush at least hints at a foreign policy statement, Edwards' statement is way ahead of Obama's. It also shows he knows who he's playing to and is keeping his eye on the ball -- no matter how much I may disagree with him.

Then, according to the same WaPo story linked above, Edwards did something presidential: He picked up the phone and called Musharraf. WaPo describes the call:

The candidate said he had encouraged Mr. Musharraf "to continue on the path to democratization [and] to allow international investigators to come in and determine what happened, what the facts were."

Edwards not only showed a boldness none of the other candidates replicated, he was more diplomatic than Hillary, encouraging Musharraf to bring in international investigators, rather than demanding it.

Now the GOP biggies, none of whom performed as well as Hillary or Edwards:

Mitt Romney. C. Romney's Web site promptly posted the transcripts of numerous media interviews given following Bhutto's assassination. They show a clear understanding of the threats radical Islamism poses:

"This really underscores the fact, of course, that what's occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan is not unique to those areas alone, that there is a radical, violent Jihadist effort throughout the world that's trying to topple not just Western governments but moderate governments in the world of Islam. We as a nation are going to have to work together with other nations to help moderate voices within the world of Islam with a wide array of support. But this is something we're going to have to do not just in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq, but everywhere from Indonesia to Nigeria. There's a big amount of work ahead to help Muslims become strong enough to reject the extreme within them." (Hannity and Combes)

None of Romney's posted statements, however, spell out any specific action he'd take or conversation he'd have with Musharraf -- a missed opportunity.

Rudy Giuliani -- D+. Giuliani's posted response was not quite as strong as Romney's, and showed the same weaknesses:

“The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a tragic event for Pakistan and for democracy in Pakistan. Her murderers must be brought to justice and Pakistan must continue the path back to democracy and the rule of law. Her death is a reminder that terrorism anywhere — whether in New York, London, Tel-Aviv or Rawalpindi — is an enemy of freedom. We must redouble our efforts to win the Terrorists’ War on Us.”

Another missed opportunity, although HuffPo reports that Rudy's new ad, which in their Lib words "finally -- and unsurprisingly -- plays the 9/11 card," may give him a bit of a Bhutto-boost.

Mike Huckabee: F. The Huckabee Web site news room has nothing at all posted on the assassination. The Swamp posted an interview with Huckabee where he clumsily over-plays the fear card:

DES MOINES -- The day after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Republican Mike Huckabee said Friday that the killing “changes the world” by adding a new level or turmoil to the Middle East and raises concerns about terrorist attacks on America.

“The assassination of Bhutto I think creates not only new heightened tensions there but it reminds us just how delicate that situation is,” the former Arkansas governor said during an interview Friday morning on KCCI-TV. “If you think about Pakistan, that’s where if we have another terrorist attack, it’s going to be postmarked: Pakistan. That’s where Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding.”

Then Huckabee focuses his attention on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan, "where the terrorists are hiding." This continues Huckabee's string of foreign policy gaffes, since concerns about Islamism in Pakistan go far beyond what's happening in the frontier.

John McCain: B-. McCain's statement was fairly lengthy and played to his foreign policy strengths. After a paragraph of condolences, he said:

"The death of Benazir Bhutto underscores yet again the grave dangers we face in the world today and particularly in countries like Pakistan, where the forces of moderation are arrayed in a fierce battle against those who embrace violent Islamic extremism.

"Given Pakistan's strategic location, the international terrorist groups that operate from its soil, and its nuclear arsenal, the future of that country has deep implications for the security of the United States and its allies. America must stand on the right side of this ongoing struggle.

"In my numerous visits to Pakistan - to Islamabad, to Peshawar, even to the tribal areas of Waziristan - I have seen first hand the many challenges that face the political leadership there, challenges so graphically portrayed by today's tragedy. There are, in Pakistan, brave individuals who seek to lead their country away from extremism and instability and into the light of a better day. America, I believe, must do all we can to support them."

McCain appropriately touted his experience and put the right foreign policy perspective on the assassination, and was the only GOP candidate to mention Pakistan's nukes. But like all the GOP candidates, he just analyzed the situation and said nothing about what he would actually do. Good swing, but the ball went just foul.

Once again, Edwards shows himself to be, if nothing else, a masterful campaigner. And the GOP candidates continue to fail to stand out from one another -- except Huckabee, who's standing out in all the wrong ways.

Sunday Scan

Birds (Vultures?) Of A Feather

Why are we not surprised by this bit of news from Fars, the Iranian news propaganda-wire?

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Sunday voiced Tehran's support for Zimbabwe's independence and progress, and called for the utilization of all the ample potentials existing for the expansion of Tehran-Harare cooperation.

According to a report released by the Presidential Press Office, the president made the remarks in a meeting with Zimbabwe's new ambassador to Tehran, where he underscored that Tehran perceives no limit to the expansion of ties with Harare. ...

Ahmadinejad praised resistance of the Iranian and Zimbabwean nations against bullying powers, and reiterated, "Iran strongly supports the rights, independence and progress of the Zimbabwean nation."

For his part, the envoy appreciated Iran's support for the Zimbabwean nation against the bullying powers' aggressions, and underlined Harare's resolve to develop all-out ties with Iran and use Tehran's valuable experiences in the various grounds.

Proof here that you can tell a person's character by the company he keeps. The two nations may wish to pause to ask the all-important question: "Why are they bullying us?"

The Betty Windsor Channel

Queen Elizabeth has gone digital, with her own page on YouTube. Until they post her new Christmas message, you can view her first televised message, from 1957, in which she looks up from her written notes and says,

Happy Christmas.

She then looks down at her notes to refresh her memory, and adds,

Twenty-five years ago, my grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages. Today is another landmark because television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas day.

In 2007, thanks to The Royal Channel, the Official Channel of the British Monarchy, you'll be able to catch Queen Betty on your Iphone at "approximately 3 pm. GMT on Christmas day.'' In the meantime, you can stay pumped viewing such videos as The Prince of Wales Visits the Robert Clack School, Part 1, on the frivolous side and The Queen and Her Prime Minister on the really rather interesting side. It's not every day, after all, you get to hear John Majors talking about the ambiance in these private meetings, "with Corgies scattered about."

But don't expect to find clips of Betty in her bedroom like you'd expect elsewhere on YouTube. This is the Royal Channel, after all, and the real Queen Elizabeth, whomever she may be, is nowhere to be found.

God ... By The Numbers

You can tell a person's perspective on faith by whether they use the words "expressions of faith" or "religiosity" in a sentence like this one:

Our analysis of thousands of public communications across eight decades shows that American politics today is defined by a calculated, demonstrably public _______ unlike anything in modern history.

Kevin Coe and David Domke used "religiosity," so we can suspect how they feel about the rising tide of expressions of faith in campaigning today. But that doesn't take anything away from their article on History News Network, Think Religion Plays a Bigger Role in Politics Today? Y ou're Right. Statistics Prove it.

Coe and Domke point to Reagan's acceptance speech in 1980, when he requested a moment of silent prayer, as the starting point for an era they describe statistically as follows:

If one looks at nearly 360 major speeches that presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush have given, the increase in religiosity is astounding. The average president from FDR to Carter mentioned God in a minority of his speeches, doing so about 47% of the time. Reagan, in contrast, mentioned God in 96% of his speeches. George H. W. Bush did so 91% of the time, Clinton 93%, and the current Bush (through year six) was at 94%. Further, the total number of references to God in the average presidential speech since 1981 is 120% higher than the average speech from 1933-1980. References to broader religious terms, such as faith, pray, sacred, worship, crusade, and dozens of others increased by 60%.

Presidential requests for divine favor also show a profound shift. The phrase “God Bless America,” now the signature tagline of American politics, gained ubiquity in the 1980s. Prior to 1981, the phrase had only once passed a modern president’s lips in a major address: Richard Nixon’s, as he concluded an April 30, 1973, speech about the Watergate scandal. Since Reagan, presidents have rarely concluded a major address without “God Bless America” or a close variant.

What impresses me most in this statement is that those who would have us believe that America is not a Christian nation must deal with the fact that presidents from Roosevelt to Carter, who apparently did not espouse "religiosity," mentioned God in 47 percent of their speeches.

How do you account for that, other than by agreeing that America is, in fact, a Christian nation?

Another Floating Cross

clipped from www.youtube.com

In this clip (which really isn't worth your time viewing) from California's premier conservative political news blog, Flash Report, we see a surprised Cal. Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman wishing us a Christmas greeting as Flash Report publisher Jon Fleishman drops by for an unexpected visit.

As Fleishman leaves, there is a cross by the inside of the front door, above Ackerman's right shoulder. It seems the "floating cross" introduced by Mike Huckabee is taking the nation by a storm ....

You Must Follow Proper Channels!

Over at the leftist blog Media Matters, we are supposed to be upset because Fox News sourced a story to a ... a ... a ... blog!

On December 21, the front page of FoxNews.com contained a headline under the "LATEST NEWS" tab that read "Report: Over 400 Scientists Dispute Man-Made Warming." However, the purported "LATEST NEWS" item did not link to a news report but, rather, to a post on "The Inhofe EPW Press Blog," the blog of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking minority member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The horror! Unable to say anything to defend the Doctrine of Warmism Infallibility from this nailing of the Thesis of 400 to the digital door of the Church of Warmism, Media Matters can only attack the media, not the message.

Which is why Media Matters doesn't.

hat-tip: Greenie Watch

The Unicyclists And The Feminists

Think a unicycle can teach you nothing about radical feminism? Think again.

A study by a unicycling British professor seeks to trace the causes of humor (to male aggressiveness, it turns out), but along the way trounces the feminist dogma that differences between men and women are environmental, not genetic.

Here's a bit of Science Daily's write-up of the research paper:

Professor Sam Shuster conducted a year long study observing how people reacted to him as he unicycled through the streets of Newcastle upon Tyne. What began as a hobby turned into an observational study after he realized that the huge number of stereotypical and predictable responses he received must be indicative of an underlying biological phenomenon.

The study was an observation of people's reactions to a sudden unexpected exposure to a new phenomenon - in this case unicycling, which at the time few had seen. He documented the responses of over 400 individuals, and observed the responses of many others.

Over 90% of people responded physically, for example with an exaggerated stare or a wave. Almost half responded verbally -- more men than women. Here, says Professor Shuster, the sex difference was striking. 95% of adult women were praising, encouraging or showed concern. There were very few comic or snide remarks. In contrast, only 25% of adult men responded as did the women, for example, by praise or encouragement; instead 75% attempted comedy, often snide or combative as an intended put-down.

Shuster concluded, correctly I think, that the intense aggressiveness of young males, many of whom would try to knock him off his unicycle, was masked with age by biting humor. Caustic, sarcastic, aggressive humor remains the domain of men ... and Rosie.

But why would women react nurturingly to a unicycle, something none of us are exposed to much as we grow? Could it be that women are ... nurturing? And that men are aggressive?

If you are a radical feminist, you can try to discount this via the old toy guns vs. toy dolls arguments, but really, unicycles? Unicycles don't carry a societal perception that is either aggressive or passive; they are merely different, and therefore draw out a purer reaction, a reaction that shows very clearly how different men and women are.

Ron Paul's Biggest Applause Line

Tucker Carlson must be on the outs at MSNBC (and that's the outs of the outs, if ever there was such a thing) because he was recently tasked not just to follow Ron Paul around for a couple days, but to follow him around in Nevada.

He reports that in Pahrump "the crowd went wild, or as wild as a group of sober Republicans can on a Monday night. They hooted and yelled and stomped their feet," when Paul stated that there is no constitutional authority for a federal bank. Later, a Paul staffer confirmed to Tucker that "It's our biggest applause line."

Wow. Carlson has an explanation:

There are two ways to interpret a fact like that: Either the Ron Paul movement is more sophisticated than most journalists understand, or a lot of Paul supporters are eccentric bordering on bonkers.

I'll go with the latter.

Cross About Huckabee's Cross Ad

clipped from youtube.com

Floating crosses, like daisies, can be pretty things, but when they are used politically, they can offend.

Mike Huckabee is hoping that Iowa voters, busy wrapping presents and roasting chestnuts by the open fire (apparently not caring a whit about global warming), will see his friendly face, hear the warm voice and peaceful message, note that he's got the spirit of the season and isn't attacking anyone ... and maybe that they'll connect with the cross drifting by ethereally in the background as he speaks.

It is not a mistake; it is a cross, not merely a bookshelf bereft of books. The positioning, the panning, the careful contrast of white against dark makes it very evident that the image was carefully thought out to serve two purposes: Connect with Christians, and leverage the ad buy by getting free air time as pundits discuss the meaning of it all.

For me, it accomplished the latter, but not the former, and I am one big fan of the cross and all it stands for: God, Christ, salvation, love, sacrifice. I'm glad that Mike Huckabee is a Christian and that America is a place where, unlike England, a man who stands up proudly for his faith can run for office. I'm glad that Huckabee is surging in the polls for little reason other than he's a nice-sounding Christian guy, because it shows that America is still, as it always has been, a Christian nation -- despite what the Secularists would have us believe, or force us to accept.

I even believe it's fine to use the cross as a subliminal messaging tool. I met a fellow recently who had invented a new kind of file folder clip that was quite ingenious. Incorporated subtly into its inside parts was a cross. I asked him about it and he smiled and said, "I believe in workplace evangelism." More power to him.

But what Huckabee has done, besides trying rather clumsily to subtly appeal to Christians, is to leverage his ad budget by the cross. He knew and his staff knew columns would be written, blogs would be posted (mea culpa) and airtime would be filled with discussions about his ad, so his investment of a few tens of thousands of dollars would reap him millions of dollars in additional exposure.

That is the stuff of money lenders in the Temple, and you know what Jesus did to them -- He turned over their tables and chased them out. You just don't use the cross that He gave his life to us on as a way to tick up a point or two in the poll swithout having to pay for it.

As Peggy Noonan put it today in the WSJ,

Ken Mehlman, the former Republican chairman, once bragged in my presence that in every ad he did he put in something wrong--something that went too far, something debatable. TV producers, ever hungry for new controversy, would play the commercial over and over as pundits on the panel deliberated over its meaning. This got the commercial played free all over the news.

The cross is the reason you saw the commercial. The cross made it break through.

I'm not sure if Peggy saw her secondary message: The cross is what makes it possible for any of us break through, and that purpose of the cross is so far superior to what Huckabee is using it for that his ad is, in a word, sinful.

Regular readers know I'm not a Huckabee supporter because I'm voting on foreign policy platforms this election, but if I were, I'd be re-thinking my vote based on this ad.

Update: Vote on your choice for the best and the worst of the candidates' Christmas ads at Stuck on Stupid.

With Friends Like Kerrey ...

As Barack Obama made a big show yesterday of going to church -- not mosque -- to dispel rumors he's a stealth Muslim, Sen. Bob Kerrey, while endorsing Hillary Clinton, paid Obama a very Clintonesque compliment:

"I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal." (Source)

Yeah, and you know, I like the fact that Mike Huckabee doesn't know a thing about foreign policy. There are at least a billion people on this planet that don't know a thing about foreign policy, so I think that experience is a big deal.

I also like the fact that John Edwards can pretend to care about health care and the downtrodden, as he sits in his 10,400-square-foot home, enjoying the cash he won from settlements that drove up costs we all, rich and poor, pay for health insurance. There are at least a billion hypocrites in the world ...

But most of all, I like the fact that Hil and Bill are so good at smiling warmly as they systematically destroy their opponents. There's no one in the world as good at it as they are, and that experience, especially if it lands Hil in the White House, would be a very , very big deal, and I trust there are millions of people here in the USA intelligent enough to see through it.

More Stuff Huck Knoweth Not

OK, we've gotten used to the fact that Mike Huckabee was unaware of the new National Intelligence Estimate hours after it was released.

No problem. Had he been president, and had he bombed Iran, he could have just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Gosh, no one told me."

Now he's sharing with us what he doesn't know about Mormonism:

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

The article, to be published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn't know much about it. His rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a member of the Mormon church, which is known officially as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (AP)

In the Wentworth Letter, Joseph Smith wrote as the first article of the Articles of Faith:

We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

It took me less than 30 seconds to find that reference, and as I look at it, I don't see Satan mentioned as a brother of Jesus.

Even a dumb attorney knows not to ask questions he doesn't know the answer to. You'd expect better from even a dumb presidential candidate.

The Huckabee Pile-On

Interesting times for the minister from Hope: As he rises in the polls, he takes broadside after broadside:

• "Earlier this week, I compared Mike Huckabee's stated approach to foreign policy to that of Jimmy Carter. The more I learn about Huckabee, the more I think I may have been unfair to Carter ..." That's Mirengoff at Power Line, who qualifies that he means Carter the president, not Carter the current nut-case.
  
  
• Writing about AP's story that Huckabee supported quarantining AIDS patients, Adler at NRO writes, "... this is a pretty outrageous position for Huckabee to have held at the time. This was not the early 1980s, when the threat posed by the HIV virus was poorly understood. Rather it was 1992, long after it was understood that AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact. So either Huckabee was woefully ignorant about the nature of AIDS, or he supported a quarantine despite the lack of a threat of communicability. Neither interpretation speaks well of him."
  
  
• At Politico, Mike Allen channels another AP story and writes, "'Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, surging in Iowa polls in the Republican presidential race, wrote on a questionnaire while running for U.S. Senate in 1992 ... "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk," Huckabee wrote in the questionnaire for The Associated Press, which reported the answer on Saturday.
  
  
• Summing this stuff up, Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse gives us a window on the view of the non-Evangelical Right: "So go ahead, indulge yourselves my Christian right friends. Nominate the man who can quote parables from the bible but doesn’t know that the INS isn’t in business anymore. Elevate a man who is “right” on all your issues but is as unschooled in foreign policy as George Bush was when he took office in 2001. Except we weren’t at war then and didn’t think it necessary to have a president who had a broad, adult, outlook on the world."

His position on homosexuality won't hurt him among Evangelicals if he doesn't waffle and explains it with grace and humility, but there are not enough Evangelicals in America to elect a president, especially one so inept on domestic and foreign policy.

Huckabee's rocket is going to flame out soon -- John Dean-like, according to Hindrocket at Power Line -- and this pleasant but incapable man will no longer be a force, leaving us again with a fractured GOP field.

I had my moment of infatuation with Huckabee because he was so darn likable, so I've been considering the candidates:

• Romney: Nice speech Thursday, but if we're not forgiving Huck the errors of his way while governor, we're stuck with Romney's gubernatorial record as well. Troubling.
  
  
• Thompson: His lack of energy is making me tired, very tired.
  
  
• The Second Tier: Nuff said.

That leaves Giuliani and McCain.

McCain is one of the least likable candidates I've ever seen. Rough, angry, intense. But I can definitely forgive him his campaign reform debacles and it seems like he's listening to the electorate on immigration. On the war, no one touches him.

But can he beat Hillary?

Oh, and is Hillary the nominee?

Giuliani strikes me as a Bill Clinton in the making: likable, electable, competent ... but oily and not to be trusted with the public's funds or trust.

But he can beat Hillary.

Oh, and is Hillary the nominee?

Try as I might to ignore her, she is central to my process. I'm watching her troubles with great interest because ultimately, they may have more to do with my vote than whatever McCain or Giuliani say between now and California's primary on Feb. 5.

hat-tip: memeorandum