I'm waiting to get on a conference call with Clinton campaign officials, who, no doubt, will again defend their attacks on Barack Obama by claiming they have no choice but to respond to his criticisms of Hillary and Bill Clinton. But many of their attacks have been disingenuous. On a similar call yesterday, Mark Penn, her chief strategist, blasted Obama for saying as a candidate for the Senate in 2003 that he would not vote for Iraq war funding and then doing so after he entered the Senate. But there's a problem with that shot: as a candidate, Obama never said he would never vote for Iraq war funding; he said he opposed the war spending bill then pending for several reasons. The Clinton camp has legitimate criticism it could toss at Obama. The experience issue is a real one. But the Clinton crowd continues to mix real and phony attacks, pissing off some Democrats but succeeding strategically by keeping Obama bogged down in an acrimonious mudwrestle. I wonder what they'll come up with next. Meanwhile, allow me to cross-post my take on the recent GOP debate, which first appeared on MotherJones.com. Bottom line: they were nice to each other but, boy, did they mug the truth.

At Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, the GOP contenders did their best not to make any news. No one attacked anyone; no one disagreed on any major policy matter--except regarding a proposal to establish a national catastrophic insurance fund that would back up private insurance firms. (Rudy Giuliani, playing to Florida homeowners, voiced his support for it; Mitt Romney supported the general notion; John McCain attacked legislation that would set up such a fund as a $200 billion boondoggle.) Generally, the candidates made up a chorus for tax cuts and fighting--make that, winning--the Iraq war. (Then there was Ron Paul.) At times, the candidates hailed their rivals. It was so.... un-Democratic. No nastiness--even though McCain and Romney, essentially tied for first place in the Florida polls, have been hurling negative ads at each other. (A Romney ad assails McCain for flip-flopping on tax cuts; a McCain spot blasts Romney for...flip-flopping on tax cuts. McCain is actually comparing Romney to John Kerry.)

If you were forced to pick a winner--and in the absence of policy disputes, the debate was all about the horse race--you'd probably have to choose Romney, who seemed quasi-commanding and who this night, for some reason, looked more like Hollywood's idea of a president than usual. But no candidate hurt his own prospects. That doesn't mean, though, they didn't come out with some whoppers. Here's a sampling:

* Moderator Tim Russert asked McCain about a comment McCain had supposedly made--"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated"--and McCain shot back, "I don't know where you got that quote from; I'm very well-versed in economics." Well, McCain did tell the Baltimore Sun, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should." So much for being "well-versed."

* Asked whether it was un-American for U.S. banks to seek infusions of billions of dollars in capital from foreign sources, Giuliani said there was nothing wrong with that as long as "they're transparent." Giuliani, though, still refuses to be transparent about his own multi-million-dollar business dealings, declining to release information about the clients and foreign officials he has worked with as a consultant.

* McCain said that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was "hell-bent on acquiring" weapons of mass destruction. Actually, he wasn't. Saddam might have desired WMDs. But for years prior to the invasion, the Iraqi dictator had suspended his WMD program and done nothing to pursue WMDs, according to the final report of Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group.

* Mike Huckabee, voicing his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, said that just because the United States didn't find WMDs in Iraq that "doesn't mean it wasn't there." The aforementioned Duelfer report--and Duelfer took over the Iraq Survey Group as a hawk who had believed Saddam possessed WMDs--made it clear that Saddam not only had no weapons in the years leading up to the war, he had no WMD program. In other words, there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq--period.

* Romney praised Bush for mounting the Iraq war and making sure al Qaeda could not gain "a safe haven" in Iraq "for launching attacks against us." That was certainly not an issue prior to the invasion. Saddam had no operational ties with al Qaeda. And now there's little, if any chance, that the small and unpopular al Qaeda outfit in Iraq could take over Iraq, pushing aside the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

* Romney claimed that under Hillary Clinton's universal health care proposal, everybody will get their coverage "from the government." Here's how Clinton describes it: "If you have a plan you like, you keep it. If you want to change plans or aren't currently covered, you can choose from dozens of the same plans available to members of Congress, or you can opt into a public plan option like Medicare." That's not a government-only plan.

* Huckabee said that Americans "ought to be able to respect people who don't have any [faith]." Yet in a book he co-wrote in 1998, Huckabee huffed, "Men who have rejected God and do not walk in faith are more often than not immoral, impure, and improvident (Gal. 5:19-21). They are prone to extreme and destructive behavior, indulging in perverse vices and dissipating sensuality (1 Cor. 6:9-10)." That just doesn't come across as a respectful attitude regarding people who don't have faith.

But the candidates sure did behave nicely.

Over the past few months, Jim Pinkerton, my regular sparring partner on Bloggingheads.tv, has regularly rushed to the defense of Mike Huckabee. When I wondered aloud whether Huckabee really does believe that angels intervened when he was in a hunting contest (to help him kill an elk), Pinkerton pooh-poohed my secularistic skepticism. When I uncovered a little-known 1998 book in which Huckabee lumped together environmentalism and pornography, seemingly compared homosexuality with necrophila, and insisted that people who "do not walk in faith" tend to be "immoral, impure and improvident," Pinkerton claimed I was taking the former Arkansas governor's comments out of context. (I begged to differ.)

So it did not come as a shock when I heard that Pinkerton, who was a domestic policy adviser for the first President Bush, had suspended his career as pundit to go to work for Huckabee's presidential campaign.

Pinkerton is a quirky, independent-minded, and affable conservative, which is why I have enjoyed working with him on bhTV. He proudly wears the paleocon badge, and he has been against the Iraq war from the start, blasting away at the neocons and their imperial ambitions. He's a fierce hawk on immigration. No fence is too big or too large for him. He has railed repeatedly on bhTV that elites (I guess that includes me) just don't get it--the "it" being the supposed widespread and deep popular anger about illegal immigrants. He's also a utopian advocate of space exploration. He wants off Planet Earth. Matt Yglesias recently poked at Pinkerton's way-out notions.

I wonder whether Huckabee and his campaign realize what they're getting with Pinkerton. Perhaps they're comfortable with his blistering attacks on George W. Bush and the neocons--even though Huckabee stands with Bush and the hawks on the Iraq war. I doubt Huckabee would take personal offense at Pinkerton's argument that the defense of "Christendom" (against creeping Muslimization) ought to be the organizing principle of U.S. policy. But does Huckabee need more attention drawn toward his fundamentalism?

In vetting Pinkerton, did the Huckabee-ites consider one of his proposals for domestic security: put a cop in front of every mosque in America. Yes, that's what he said during a recent Bloggingheads.tv match-up. He was serious. Quite serious. You can see for yourself right here:

If you watched the clip, you saw that when I questioned his idea, Pinkerton said that "we can have some elections on this issue." So is Pinkerton now advising Huckabee to call for police surveillance of every mosque in the nation? I'd sure like to be the fly on the wall for that meeting. Or when Pinkerton says to Huckabee that he ought to unfurl the flag of "Christendom." Or when he tells Huckabee that space is the place.

As I said, I do like Pinkerton. He is engaging and possesses (as you can tell) an unorthodox mind. I wish him well, though not success, for a Pinkertonian Huckabee is a rather daunting (if not frightening) prospect to consider.

The Fred shall rise again?

Well, he tried. At the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, Fred Thompson, the lackadaisical former senator, finally got off the couch. His past debate performances-- like much of his campaign--have been a series of nothing burgers. He's acted the curmudgeon, grumbling about this or that and making a not very good fifth (sixth, seventh, eighth....) impression. But last night, when the opportunity arrived, he pounced--and lit into Mike Huckabee. Reading from notes--or a script--Thompson called the former Arkansas governor a "Christian leader" but (gasp!) a liberal when it comes to economic policies, foreign policy, and immigration policy. In one of the few instances of Thompson displaying any passion, he was bashing Huckabee, who deflected the blast with an aw-shucks response. It was as if some campaign aide had finally attached electrodes to his backside so Thompson, for at least 90 seconds, could show some pep. (I could imagine the cheers at Thompson HQ: "He's alive, he's alive!")

South Carolina is truly Thompson's last stand. But he's up against his old Senate pal John McCain, who's resurgent, and Huckabee, who plays well to the social conservatives of the Palmetto State. South Carolina was McCain's Waterloo in 2000, but as a national-security-first Republican maybe this time around he can win over the Republicans who did not fancy him as a maverick eight years ago. And Huckabee can grab those religious rightwingers who still recall that McCain dissed Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the religious right during the 2000 campaign. That does not leave much space for Thompson, a son of the South.

Thompson's flopping performance (so far) has been one of the surprises of the 2008 campaign. Remember the conventional wisdom that he got into the race too late? Well, maybe he entered the contest too early. He was much better as an almost-candidate than as an actual candidate. The consensus explanation for his lack of success (so far) is that he's been a lazy and lousy candidate who has not shown any flash or zeal. That's certainly true. But I have another theory.

Thompson has spent more of his years as a Hollywood actor than as a politician. And as an actor, he's been quite lucky. People keep developing roles that suit him, but each one is essentially the same role. We need a gruff White House chief of staff. Let's get Thompson. We need a gruff district attorney. Let's get Thompson. We need a gruff president. Let's get Thompson. We need a gruff admiral. Let's get Thompson. We need a gruff CIA director. Let's get Thompson. We need a gruff senator. Let's get Thompson. Or in the case of his first movie, Marie, we need Thompson. Let's get Thompson.

Fred Thompson has not had to stretch his acting chops much. He has basically had to hit his mark, read his lines, and be himself. He's done that well, and he's made millions of dollars. But he never developed range or flexibility as an actor. He could do gruff--and perhaps laconic--but not a lot more.

So there he was early last year, pursuing his acting career, when people started telling him they had another part for him: presidential candidate. He jumped into the race believing that, once more, he could play himself and wow the crowds. But this script demanded more of Thompson. He might have (for some) looked the part--though it does seem he's aged six years in six months--but he did not possess the skills needed to connect with the audience, I mean voters, who were expecting more than a gruff former prosecutor/admiral/CIA director/chief of staff. He's been mailing in his performance and receiving the predictable reviews. The debate last night was not quite a career-reviving moment, even if it did show Thompson had a dollop of spunk left in him.

In recent weeks, my one-liner take on Thompson has been this: if you want your cranky uncle to be president, Thompson is your candidate. Last night didn't change that review. Thompson still has to prove to Republican voters there's more to Fred Thompson than just Fred Thompson.

Mike Huckabee is a threat. Not just to Mitt Romney, but to both the leaders of the Republican Party and the leaders of the Christian Right.

For years, the Republican Party has played the Christian card, pushing "family values" and decrying abortion and (more recently) gay marriage and, in return, collecting the votes of evangelicals across the country (including key presidential swing states). But if Huckabee wins Iowa and continues to do well in subsequent states, how will the GOP elite react to the possibility of this former Baptist minister nabbing the nomination? My hunch: with panic. While Huckabee can pull social conservatives, he's not what the party needs to attract independents and those suburban GOPers who are not social conservatives. Consequently, there may well develop a campaign--call it a crusade?--to stop Huckabee. And if such an effort emerges, how will the social conservative grassroots of the GOP will take it? Another hunch: not kindly. They've been there for the party, and if they see their party not standing by one of their own, there will be resentment, anger, and alienation--hell to pay?--which could last until November and beyond.

It's not hard to envision a stop-Huck campaign actually deepening his support, for it would play into the familiar narrative of a Christian being persecuted by the powerful. Imagine Huckabee turned into a martyr. Many Huckabee supporters might see how the GOP leaders respond to his success as a litmus test. And that's not a test Republican leaders are likely to pass.

The same goes for the leaders of the Religious Right. How can Pat Robertson face his flock and justify choosing Rudy Giuliani over one of their own? Why won't James Dobson bless Huckabee's bid? Why does the National Right To Life Committee side with a fellow who once advised an abortion rights group instead of supporting an antiabortion champion? Why do some evangelicals ride with a Mormon who has flip-flopped on abortion and gay rights? Have they, Huckabee will ask, succumbed to the corruptions of power? Yes, many of his supporters will say. And, of course, they're right.

There are two possible splits in the works: one separating social conservative votes from the GOP and the other dividing them from the top of the Religious Right infrastructure. So should the Democrats be cheering on the former Arkansas governor and proclaiming, Thank God for Huckabee? Perhaps. But they ought to be careful what they wish for, for maybe Huckabee does, as he believes, have God on his side.

Skeletons--it's hard to keep them in the closet when you run for president, especially if you start to do well. That's what Mike Huckabee has been finding out at hyperspeed in recent weeks. His past statements on religion, AIDS, and the family have come under close watch. His decisions as Arkansas governor are being dissected; his ethical lapses are being studied. At Mother Jones, we discovered that that his presidential campaign and the churches where he served as a pastor for twelve years will not provide copies of the sermons he delivered. GIven that Huckabee campaigns as a self-proclaimed "Christian leader," his actions as "Christian leader" are certainly legitimate subjects of examination. Why is he sitting on them?

I did find one quasi-mega-sermon. Yesterday, I posted piece on a 1998 book Huckabee wrote that was filled with inflammatory fundamentalist rhetoric. In that book, Huckabee equated environmentalism with pornography and associated homosexuality with necrophilia. He dismissed those who advocate workplace equality for women. He denounced those Christians who accept a "misguided version of 'tolerance.'" He decried unnamed "modern government-sponsored social engineers" and claimed that "virtually every dollar poured into" government social programs is wasted. He also declared that people who do not believe in God tend to be "immoral" and tend to engage in "destructive behavior."

The book's content was not shocking, coming from a Bible-thumpinig fundamentalist. But Huckabee is trying to pitch himself as a friendly fellow who, as he claimed in the last debate, can unite a "very polarized country." Huckabee is free to believe whatever he wants, but it's hard to see how a social conservative advocating such extreme views could bring together a divided society.

There's still plenty of digging to be done in the fields of Huckabee. Who knows what will be unearthed? Yesterday, my former co-author Michael Isikoff and a Newsweek colleague of his broke the story that Huckabee, when he was governor in 1998, allegedly blocked a criminal investigation of his then seventeen-year-old son. David Huckabee had been accused of killing a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp, where he was a counselor. The head of the state police at the time told Newsweek that Huckabee's office leaned on him to stop any inquiry. And the FBI chief in Little Rock back then also said Huckabee attempted to stop an investigation of his son. No charges were ever filed. Huckabee denied the accounts of these two men.

The Newsweek story didn't detail the grisly details of the dog-killing incident. But a letter sent to the head of the Boy Scouts in 1998 by the Animal Legal Defense Fund did include the specifics:

It has come to my attention that David Huckabee and Clayton Friday, two scout counselors, have admitted to the brutal killing of a stray dog at Camp Pioneer on July 11, 1998, and have been protected by the Caddo Area Council as well as Camp Pioneer authorities. The two boys allegedly hung a dog by his/her neck, throwing the body over a railing to a twenty foot drop. After realizing that this did not kill the dog, they slit his/her throat, and stoned the dog to death.

Nice boys. No doubt, throughout this (alleged) event, they were thinking, What would Jesus do? ("Yeah, stone the dog!") Now, are the sins of the son the responsibility of the father? They sure are--if the father intervened in a criminal matter to protect the son. And by the way, the 1998 Huckabee book that I referenced above was called Kids Killing Kids. In that book, Huckabee claimed that moral decline in America was producing the kid-killers who conduct murder sprees in schools. The only way to address this problem, he argued, was to make religion and faith the cornerstone of American culture and to do so within the family. Hmmm, what went wrong in the Huckabee household?

Loads of Democrats would be delighted to see Huckabee trounce the other Republicans. For then, they will have months and months to keep on digging and to ask many, many questions about the minister-turned-politican.

With the United States' image abroad suffering--especially in the Muslim world--what could America do to improve its standing? How about selecting as commander in chief a fellow who describes himself as a warrior for Christ?

That's what more and more Republican primary voters appear to be planning to do, for lovable, ol' Mike Huckabee, now the Iowa front-runner, has used some harsh rhetoric over the years to express his belief--to put it roughly--that everyone ought to be Christian. As has been widely noted in the past day, during a 1998 speech to Southern Baptist pastors, Huckabee, a former pastor who at the time was governor of Arkansas, declared that they had to "take this nation back for Christ." (Now where would that put American Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists?) And in a 2003 Veterans Day speech at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Huckabee, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram put it, compared Christians to "soldiers on a spiritual battlefield." In that address, Huckabee explained, "When you're a pastor, you should be the captain of a warship that's fighting the forces of evil." (He also complained that too many "people in the pews" would prefer their pastor be "captain of a Love Boat," meaning a minister who arranges feel-good activities for his parishioners, such as outings for seniors and summer camps for the youth.) In the speech to the seminarians, Huckabee urged them to consider themselves as soldiers and added, "you must be willing to sever relationships that hinder the mission."

Sure, plenty of fundamentalist Christians feel this way. But such tough talk--let's be Christian soldiers and reclaim the country for Christ!--probably would not play so well abroad. For example, how might Arabs interpret a President Huckabee decision to send more troops to Iraq? Hmmmm, onward Christian soldiers? (On Monday, my colleague Jonathan Stein posted other examples of Huckabee's rhetoric of absolutism.)

Huckabee has called for compassionate social policy, and there's a touch of populism to his positions. In his 1998 speech to the Baptists, he decried Christians for not doing enough to help the poor:

I'm often asked why taxes are so high and government is so big. It's because the faith we have in local churches has become so small. If we'd been doing what we should have -- giving a dime from every dollar to help the widows, the orphans and the poor -- we now wouldn't be giving nearly 50 cents of every dollar to a government that's doing...what we should have been doing all along.

But at the same time, he denounced the ability of government to help those widows and orphans:

I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.

So it all comes back to Christ. Forget government, just get right with God's only son. That's not surprising for a Baptist pastor. But it may be a hard sell in the general election and overseas. Which is probably why, as Stein and I reported yesterday, the Huckabee campaign says it will not release any of sermons Huckabee delivered during the twelve years he was a pastor at two Arkansas churches. He's now a captain who wants to keep his battle plan secret.

Once upon a time Mike Huckabee was a Baptist preacher. Then Mike Huckabee became a lieutenant governor. Then Mike Huckabee became a governor. Then Mike Huckabee became an ex-governor running for president--and a front-runner in the all-important little state of Iowa. And that Mike Huckabee was not so keen on sharing with voters and the media all the glorious words that Mike Huckabee the minister preached.

Since becoming a hot commodity, Huckabee has zigzagged on statements regarding faith and politics. In one speech he said the power of prayer was responsible for his surge in Iowa polls; he then quickly backtracked. In one debate, he indicated he believed in creationism; more recently, he dodged the question. And days ago he hit a rough patch when harsh statements he made in 1992 about AIDS were publicized.

In the midst of all this, Mother Jones, my home base, went looking for copies of the sermons Huckabee delivered during the twelve years he was pastor at two churches in Arkansas. The bottom line: neither church is willing or able to produce a copy of any of Huckabee's sermons from that entire period. And Huckabee's campaign, responding to an inquiry from my colleague Jonathan Stein, says it will not take any steps to make Huckabee's sermons available to the media or the public.

Is the full gospel of Huckabee being hidden from the public? You can read the story Stein and I wrote about this here.

Who's afraid of Mike Huckabee? Well, apparently Fred Thompson is.

As D-Day in Iowa approaches, anxiety waxes and knives are being sharpened within the campaign HQs of assorted Republican presidential wannabes. Some group in New Hampshire days ago was push-polling (calling potential voters and reminding them that Mitt Romney is a Mormon). The Fred Thompson and John McCain campaigns quickly decried this underhanded move, and the culprit remains a mystery. (Hmmm, were they too quick to denounce the tactic? Then again, why was Rudy Giuliani not as quick as they were to attack these unnamed attackers?) But after expressing dismay at the push-polling, Thompson's campaign on Sunday zapped out not one but two emails kneeing Huckabee in the groin (metaphorically, that is).

Shortly after Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, appeared on Fox News Sunday, Thompson's lieutenants dashed off a press release claiming that Huckabee, a Baptist minister, had misled Fox News's Chris Wallace. A sample:

Huckabee Claim: "We didn't raise [taxes] on nursing home patients. That was a quality assurance fee."

Fact: Fred Thompson can "play up his 100% pro-life voting record and his 0% Planned Parenthood score. Sometimes it's just plain hard to argue with the numbers." (David Brody, "Fred Thompson's Pro-Life Strategy," Christian Broadcasting Network, 6/15/07)

And so on....

Thompson's communications guys were working overtime on the Sabbath, for they also dispatched an email dissing Huckabee and Chuck Norris, the action-movie star. The Huckabee campaign had just released a new ad featuring Norris. One of my Mother Jones colleagues calls the spot "the greatest political advertisement of all time." That might be a slight overstatement. But it is a doozy. (You can see it here.) In the ad, Norris and Huckabee trade off remarks about the other. Huckabee's are supposed to be wry ("my plan to secure the border: two words--Chuck Norris"); Norris plays it straight ("Mike Huckabee is a lifelong hunter who will protect our Second Amendment rights...Mike Huckabee wants to put the I.R.S. out of business").

The ad is on the silly side. But for the Thompson campaign it's as serious as...well, his pathetic poll numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. Thompson's communications director Todd Harris felt compelled to proclaim:

With his new campaign ad featuring Chuck Norris, Mike Huckabee has confused celebrity endorsement with serious policy. What would Huckabee do to secure America's border against millions of illegal immigrants pouring into our country? According to his ad, "Two words: Chuck Norris."

It's appropriate that Chuck Norris would co-star in an ad with Mike Huckabee, given Huckabee has been Missing in Action" on the issue of illegal immigration his entire career. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee called supporters of a bill that would forbid voting rights for illegal immigrants "racist" and "bigots." Huckabee's position on immigration is closer to Ted Kennedy than to conservatives.

What a sign that Huckabee, the potential sleeper of the year, is gaining traction: the only movie actor in the race is worried about him--and overreacting. But in the two most recent polls in Iowa, Huckabee placed second (at 24 and 18 percent), while Thompson was either tied for third (at 11 percent) or in fourth (at 10 percent). And in the most recent survey of New Hampshire Republicans, Huckabee was in fifth place (at 6 percent) yet ahead of Thompson in sixth place (5 percent). It appears that Thompson, adopting a NASCAR strategy, believes he has to take out the car in front of him before zooming onward--and that driver is Huckabee.

Mitt Romney also is worried about this accelerating social con. Romney recently slammed Huckabee for having supported a proposal in Arkansas to provide college scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants. Huckabee, bless him, fired back, "I guess Mitt Romney would rather keep people out of college so they can keep working on his lawn."

The GOP race is turning into a circular firing squad. There are several in-the-hunt contenders, and the dynamics of the race keep shifting. Remember when a guy named John McCain was the favorite? For a while, the main action seemed to be the mudwrestle between the Giuliani and Romney camps. Now Huckabee is fielding the most hits. Last week, the politerati (myself included) wondered how nasty Barack Obama and John Edwards would get in taking on Hillary Clinton. The answer provided by last Thursday's debate: not as nasty as anticipated. Expect the Republicans to get more down and dirty (and desperate) in the days--and debates--ahead.

Is it time to take Mike Huckabee seriously? Recent polling in Iowa shows that the former Arkansas governor has become the first second-tier candidate of the 2008 race to elbow his way into the first tier. In the Hawkeye State, Huckabee is essentially tied with Rudy Giuliani for second place in the Republican race, with Mitt Romney still maintaining a lead over both of them. An ordained Southern Baptist minister, Huckabee has been crusading for president as the real-deal social conservative. He does have a legitimate claim to the title. Unlike Giuliani and Romney, Huckabee has always opposed abortion rights. Unlike Fred Thompson, he has never lobbied for an abortion rights group. Unlike John McCain, he has not taken potshots at the leaders of the religious right. (McCain did so during the 2000 campaign.) Huckabee is a personable and thoughtful fellow. He has seriously discussed health care matters, and he once pardoned Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (for reckless driving in Arkansas in the 1970s). For good cause, there appears to be a Huckabee bubble--or bubblelette--in Iowa.

Which brings me to angels.

A few weeks ago, Huckabee, as did other GOP presidential wannabes, spoke at the NRA's "Celebration of American Values" conference in Washington, DC. He entertained the crowd of gun enthusiasts with stories showing his love of hunting and his appreciation of firearms. And he tossed in a theological angle:

To watch mallards come in a flock, cut their wings and land but a few feet in front of you on a cold winter day near Stuttgart, Arkansas, is just about as close to heaven as I think one can get on this Earth. And as one who believes, because of my faith, that I'm going to Heaven, I'm pretty sure there will be duck hunting in Heaven, and I can't wait.

This remark later caused Jon Stewart to quip that Huckabee was saying that our heaven must be duck hell.

Huckabee then went on to recount the time he was in antelope hunting contest in Wyoming. Under the rules of this hunt, each member of a three-person team only got one shot. The day was cold and windy, and several inches of snow fell. After several hours of stalking prey in the cold, Huckabee had his chance: an antelope was 250 yards away, just at the edge of his range as a shooter. This is what happened:

I decided that one way or the other, this hunt is about to be over, because I can't stand any more of this cold. And somehow, by the grace of God, when I squeezed the trigger, my Weatherby .300 Mag, which has got to be the greatest gun, I think, ever made in the form of a rifle -- for my sake in hunting, I've never squeezed the trigger and not gotten something -- did its work, and somehow the angels took that bullet and went right to the antelope, and my hunt was over in a wonderful way.

Angels guided his bullet into the animal.

I know that it's easy for the non-religious to sneer at that sort of explanation for a good shot. But Huckabee's account raises a question: does he truly believe that angels intervene in such matters as antelope hunts, that angels spend their (presumably precious) time helping people kill bucks?

Probing a political candidates' religious beliefs can be a dicey matter. But anyone campaigning to be president is asking to be awarded tremendous power--the power to start wars, the power to really mess things up, the power to destroy the planet. It does not seem unfair to ask him or her how he or she views the world--including its metaphysical workings. I'd like to know if a politician truly believes his everyday actions--say, his golf swing--is influenced by angels. That does tell us something about the person.

Perhaps there are voters who would be happy to have a fellow in the Oval Office who has angels helping him when he shoots at an antelope. Imagine what angels could do with an air strike against a thuggish regime developing nuclear weapons. But other voters might find such a literal belief (or dependency) on angels off-putting.

In either case, I say voters have the right to know.

Consequently, I have twice sent Huckabee's campaign an inquiry in this regard. Several days ago, I emailed this question to his media people:

Does Governor Huckabee believe that angels literally intervene in the affairs of human beings and that such intervention includes hunting events?

So far...no response.

I'm not in Iowa these days tracking the candidates, but I encourage political reporters there who see Huckabee to ask him about angels. After all, if those angels can help him bag an antelope on a snowy ridge in Wyoming, perhaps they can help him round up caucus-goers in frosty Iowa come this January.

THE PARTY OF LARRY CRAIG. What is it with Republicans? From KIRO-TV in Seattle:

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A Republican state legislator who repeatedly voted against gay rights measures resigned his seat Wednesday amid revelations he had sex with a man he met at an erotic video store while in Spokane on a GOP retreat.

But in police reports, Curtis said he was being extorted by a man he had sex with in a Spokane hotel room. The other man contends Curtis reneged on a promise to pay $1,000 for sex.

That reminds me. Whatever happened to Senator David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana and married man who acknowledged calling the escort service of the DC Madam? Nothing. Vitter, who once argued that Bill Clinton had to be impeached for his immoral actions, is still in good standing within a party that professes fidelity to family values. Maybe the Republicans are too busy defending marriage to worry about Vitter.

A BIDEN BUBBLE? During Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate, Senator Joe Biden had the best moment of the night. And, no, it was not when he slammed Rudy Giuliani for knowing nothing about foreign policy. I explain here.