Oh, Christmas Tree

Where are you, Christmas tree?  Not too many years ago, there were Christmas trees for sale on almost every corner. Church youth groups sold them to raise money for their projects.  Nice. Fresh. Fragrant. Then came the assault of the artificial trees.  I guess we became lazy.  Or protective of the living trees.  I’ve not seen a single Christmas tree lot this year, although my wife says the garden center down the street has them.  I’ve seen a couple of cars with trees strapped to the top, so I can (I guess) start driving in the direction from which they came and see if I run into any trees.  Our daughter insists on a live tree.  Always has.  Likely always will.  So, I will be out this weekend, looking for something to plant in the family room to brighten the holidays.

As for the political stage, highlights of the day appear to come from Huckabee and Romney.  For Romney, it’s his big religion speech.  For Huckabee, it’s the Wayne Dumond case and the ignorance of the NIE.  Huck was making the rounds on TV last night and today. I woke up to his appearance on Morning Joe on MSNBC.  They brought David Shuster on to do part of the questioning.  Shuster was a reporter here in Little Rock during that time and managed to get in some good questions.  Huckabee had the answers, but not all of them ring 100% true.  Let the digging begin.  He’s becoming a game of one man’s word against another’s. Lots of links, after the jump!

Let’s begin with the NIE incident.  Remember, the NIE came out Monday. The interview was Tuesday night. That’s almost two full days to have not heard anything about it.  Ooof.

Huckabee as Deer in the Headlights Trusts hearsay over NIE

It is not such a big scandal that Huckabee hadn’t heard the news. When you are traveling and out among people, often you don’t, until you get back to the hotel that night. I can testify to that myself. What is the scandal is that Huckabee had been briefed by someone to opposite conclusions from those of the NIE and [...]

Huckabee was on first-name basis with convicted rapist

As Joe writes in the post below, Huckabee just went on CNN in an effort to portray himself as the hero in the double rape double murder that he facilitated. Huckabee is now claiming that he denied the commutation for the convicted rapist. Cute. What he doesn’t tell you is that he was planning on [...]

Romney: No Religious Test For President

Republican Mitt Romney, confronting voters’ skepticism about his Mormon faith, declared Thursday that as president he would “serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause,” and said calls for him to explain and justify his religious beliefs go against the profound wishes of the nation’s founders. At the same time, [...]

Romney on religion

…Most of those whose votes Romney seeks will accept the line he seeks to draw between religious faith generally (relevant) and specific church doctrine (irrelevant). Our Founders ceratinly did, as Romney points out. However, Romney is giving the speech because there are more than a few such voters who are not inclined to accept that line.  The speech,  [...]

Oh, by the way, Romney’s campaign has another tiny, little, problem:

Romney Supporters Seen on Video Stuffing ‘Ballot Box’ on Touch-Screens at Tampa GOP Straw Poll

Okay, we retract our hundreds of articles with evidence that Voter Fraud (as opposed to Election Fraud) is exceedingly rare. At least when it comes to Republicans and Florida. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Mitt Romney supporters stuffed the “ballot box” (actually touch-screen DRE [...]