The perfect Thanksgiving/Christmas gift.

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Off to Minnesota, so Dean Barnett sits in tomorrow.  If he falls into the Great Gloat, call him on it.

from my audience on air and in e-mail is not good at all.  The neo-Willie Horton case isn't the problem, but the answers on illegals who turn 18 are being very poorly received, as is the governor's endorsement of an anti-federalist one-size-fits-all-states workplace smoking ban. 

The transcript is here.  Here's the exchange on smoking:

HH: And the last question is do you support a federal ban on smoking as has been alleged? 

MH: No, I don’t. I support workplace clean air. But a federal ban on smoking would mean that you couldn’t smoke in your own home. I don’t care what people do in their home. But in a workplace, in our state, we passed a law which I’m very proud of, and that said that people have a right to have clean air at the workplace. I did not support a ban just in restaurants and bars because frankly, I think that the problem with that is that you’re punishing the customers. But what you have a right to do is to protect the workers in the same was you do from radon gas and a host of other carcinogens and toxic fumes, which is exactly what tobacco smoke is.  

HH: Well, I understand that from the state side, but I’m talking about the federal lawmakers getting involved in this and imposing on states a uniform standard. Do you…just for the workplace. Do you support federal laws mandating standards for workplace non-smoke environments?  

MH: I personally would on the workplace issue. If there are two or more people, and as long as anyone under the age of 21 worked in that place, there ought to be some protections for them. 

The interview will play in the first two segments of hour one and hour three today.  We spend the first few questions on the case of Wayne Dumond which Governor Huckabee answered questions about today.  We also talk about his immigration comments last night on CNN.  The transcript will be up here later, and the audio here.

The background on Dumond is in this article by Byron York.

Here's Huckabee's exchange with Wolf Blitzer:

WOLF BLITZER: "Did you support special tuition breaks to children of illegal immigrants?"

GOV. HUCKABEE: "No, it was not special tuition breaks.  What I supported was that people who had been in our schools, who had met all of the academic requirements for a very specific scholarship would be able to get the same scholarship as anybody else because they had been in our schools and part of it they had to apply for citizenship. Now, what's better? Having a person remain a minimum wage worker and be on the subsidy?  Or, is it better that they become a citizen, they get a college education, they become a significant taxpayer, they have shown their academic credentials? And you know what Wolf? You don't punish the child for the crime of the parents."

BLITZER: "Are these children that were born in the United States? If they were they are U.S citizens, and they should get all the benefits as every citizen or were they children who came here with their illegal immigrant parents and as a result just went through the system?"

GOV. HUCKABEE: "Some would have been both. But some of them would have had to have been in our school system through their entire school career in order to qualify for the scholarships. It wasn't that if they got them someone else didn't, because it was available to anybody. Bottom line is that this country doesn't have a history of punishing the child for the sin of the parent. Now, if that causes somebody to want to vote for somebody else for President there are plenty of other people saying let's punish children. I'm sorry. But I think that you punish the crime doer. If the parent committed the crime and came here illegally, I don't have any problem with punishing them."

BLITZER: "So can I just put a finishing touch? Amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants would be OK?"

 GOV. HUCKABEE: "It is not amnesty."

BLITZER: "But you said they could apply for citizenship?"

GOV. HUCKABEE: "Well, here's the thing. It is not an amnesty because the child didn't commit a crime, the child didn't -- when he is 5 years old and comes here in the back of his parents' vehicle, did he commit the crime? That would be the point to be made."

Conservative bloggers Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan will file a formal complaint about Hillary Clinton's shady fundraising practices with the Federal Election Commission today.

On the heels of the Norman Hsu scandal, the Clinton campaign was rocked by questions of even more Hsu-like shakedowns in connection with a $380,000 fundraiser in New York which saw contributions ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 from cooks and dishwashers. At least one donor admitted to being an illegal immigrant. Another said she was illegally reimbursed for her contributions. Others said they felt pressured to give.

Unlike the Hsu cash, Hillary's campaign has yet to return the bulk of this tainted money.

This complaint brings these charges into a formal FEC process. The Clinton campaign will have 15 days to respond and publicly defend itself from charges of illegal campaign fundraising.

When lefty blogger Lane Hudson filed FEC complaints against Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, the press couldn't get enough of the story. I expect Margolis and Noonan will get similar treatment.

This is really smart on Margolis and Noonan's part, who know the issue of Democrat corruption backwards and forwards as the authors of Caucus of Corruption. For about the time it would have taken to write a blog entry on this issue, they can demand real accountability from the Clinton campaign. I wish I'd thought of this.

The full complaint is after the jump.
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For background reading, here is John Fund's column from last week.

Here is Governor Huckabee's response.

That's Roger Simon's headline at Politico.com.  The opening graphs:

We now know something that we did not know before: When Hillary Clinton has a bad night, she really has a bad night.

In a debate against six Democratic opponents at Drexel University here Tuesday, Clinton gave the worst performance of her entire campaign.

It was not just that her answer about whether illegal immigrants should be issued drivers’ licenses was at best incomprehensible and at worst misleading.

It was that for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled.

And when it was over, both the Barack Obama and John Edwards campaigns signaled that in the weeks ahead they intend to hammer home a simple message: Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.

Tuesday evening, virtually no one watched the Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC, because by and large, it was virtually unwatchable.  But there was one section that caught my eye, and if you are someone who cares about the continued existence of the state of Israel, regardless of which political party you belong to, it should have caught your eye as well.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is well known for his apocalyptic speeches about how the Zion state cannot continue, how they must be wiped off the map, etc.  So when a Holocaust-denying, religious zealot is in a position of importance in a country who is trying to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities, when that same country is supplying or training many of the main terrorist organizations in the world today, when that country is interfering in the metamorphasis of Iraq by supplying weaponry that has killed our troops, you would naturally conclude that Iran is a growing threat, is not showing any signs of cowering to international sanctions, and could indeed grow into a threat that will require a military solution to stop an unthinkable genocide. 

Foreign policy experts from the center, right and left do see Iran as a threat that might ultimately require military action.  Most recently, Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations appeared this past Friday on the Hugh Hewitt Show, saying, "Should we reach a point where we have to make a choice between a nuclear Iran or some kind of military action, then I think it’s pretty clear that a military action is where we’d have to go."

Tuesday night at Drexel University, Brian Williams asked the Democratic candidates about their position on Iran.  While they all postured their way into attacking frontrunner Hillary Clinton and/or George Bush, John Edwards took his critique into the land of the Jewish conspiracy. 



The Silky Pony got worked up because Hillary and the rest of the Democrats won't stand up to the president and say no, we're not going to let you do this.  He wasn't saying this about the Iranian president, mind you, the one who wants to go nuclear and make Israel glow in the dark.  He was saying this about our president.  Ahmadinejad doesn't seem to bother him as much as the twice-referred neocons (or as the left wing blogs call them, the Jooooos).  Edwards doesn't seem to get the concept that our military has in its custody members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, captured in Iraq trying to kill our troops by assisting insurgents.  I'm sure Israel supporters all over the world are not exactly looking forward to the Edwards presidency. 

After all the candidates thought they handled their obligatory Iran policy question, Tim Russert, to his credit, visually stunned them all by making them all answer a simple yes or no follow up question.  Russert asked all of them individually if they would take a pledge tonight to the American people that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb while they are president. Here is how Hillary responded.  

 

Standard Clintonian double-speak.  She will only pledge to try.  But if they do become a nuclear power, well, Israel, it sucks to be you. 


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So says K-Lo as she watched the Dems "debate."

Of course he would.

Romney has succeeded in the private sector, the not-for-profit-sector, and in government.

And Senator Obama's record of achievements includes...?

He's auditioning for Veep, which requires a willingness to attack.

Is Obama attacking the potential GOP nominee the Dems fear most?

The New York Sun described Yale Professor Charles Hill as Rudy's foreign policy brain today.  In an interview with me today Professor Hill was quick to counter the idea that anyone thinks for Rudy, but here's the transcript of that conversation: