Of course, just because God wants people to die is no reason to help do His will. Amsericans United:

Last August, Americans United filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service about Drake’s use of church letterhead and a church-based radio program to endorse presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Federal tax law forbids tax-exempt groups from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

In a Feb. 5 letter, the IRS notified Drake that his First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park is being investigated.

In response, Drake issued a Feb. 14 e-mail appeal to followers to engage in “imprecatory prayers” (curses) against Americans United and three of its staff members.

Wrote Drake, “In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State…. Specifically target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing [sic] and their leader Rev. Barry Lynn. They are those who lead the attack.”

Drake directed his followers to Psalms 109 (as well as Psalms 55, 58, 68, 69 and 83) for examples of imprecatory prayers.

Verses from those texts ask God to bring death and destruction to those targeted.

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office,” says one passage. “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg.”

Another passage says, “Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell.”

But here's the interesting part:

I don't think I'll ever wonder what a bad acid trip is like again.

I wonder what Susan Powter is doing nowadays, because someone has to stop the insanity:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

 Read more…

The romantics in the current Republican Party herald back to the 1980 Reagan coalition and his victory born of the “three-legged stool” of Reagan Conservatism: a strong defense, a strong economy and strong social values.

Now, over two decades later, the incongruity among those three ideals haunts the Republican presidential nomination process. As the plethora of Republican candidates stake their claims, the dissatisfaction of the Republican electorate over their choices reflects the fact that it is impossible to obtain all three of the Reagan goals simultaneously.   Read more…

Because the Republicans will never, ever stage a false-flag terror strike in October 2008 in order to elect him, they loathe him that much.

Heck, they might even not steal the election for him!

I always expected the question of how Mike Huckabee's son killed that dog* would be a fertile source for opposition researchers.

But I didn't expect that would happen the minute the Iowa polls closed! Fuck!

AP:

The former Arkansas governor said back home he would be duck hunting on the day after Christmas, but pheasant hunting in Iowa — eight days before the state's leadoff nominating caucuses — was a good substitute. He also offered a lecture declaring that hunting is good for wildlife.

Huckabee led a motorcade of photographers along gravel roads in hilly rural Iowa, hopping out of a pickup truck to take to a snow-covered field wearing his bright orange vest along with Dude, an energetic hunting dog.

How unspoiled and natural! Surely, Hucklebee is a true man of the people!

From the NYT's portrait of Mike Huckabee:

"If integrity and character are divorced from God, they don't make sense," he writes in his book, with John Perry, "Character Makes a Difference" (B&H Publishing Group, 2007). "Integrity, left to define itself, becomes evil because everyone ends up choosing his own standards."

Lots more in the piece, but nothing we haven't heard before: that Huck is surprisingly progressive on a few issues, he's a sucker for people — no matter how evil, ironically — who claim to find Jesus, he's up to his eyeballs in small-time graft, and he's ruthless with opponents.

Unlike with the Iraq War, the Republicans undoubtedly have a Plan B re: Mike Huckabee. And he for them.

Right now, there's a full-on freakout in the national GOP about the Huckster's ascendancy.

Peggy Noonan, who once thought it was irresponsible not to transubstantiate, literally says "bleh" to Huck's appeals to heavenly authority. (h/t C&L)

But let's fast-forward to Lourdes, or wherever the Republicans are holding their convention.

If Mike's deity has delivered him the delegates, do you seriously imagine anything other than the biggest authoritarian circlejerk this side of Stalinville?

[Welcome, C&L readers.]

Mike Huckabee describes the glory of heavenly guidance:

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.

That does sound wonderful, indeed.

If there are two things God likes, it's Republicans and animal-killing. So when the Huckster goes a-huntin', you think those angels would be wasting their time saving lives in Darfur? Not bloody likely.

Like the man says, read the Bible — the great epic ode to the pointless slaughter of all critters great and small.

1. Sat, 2007-12-15 01:23 [a.m.] EST, Corrente: So, how exactly did Mike Huckabee's son David kill that dog, back in the day when he was a Boy Scout?

2. Dec 15, 2007 2:51 p.m. ET, Spiky, Newsweek: A Son’s Past Deeds Come Back To Bite Huckabee

3. December 18, 2007, David Corn, CQ: Digging into Huckabee's Past Unearths Extreme Rhetoric...and Grisly Details about His Son and a Dog.

Just sayin' ...

[Welcome, Digby and C&L readers!]

Yesterday, we asked the question:

How, exactly, did Mike Huckabee's son David kill that dog?

(To be fair, there was a second Scout involved in the killing with Huckabee; we'll get to that below.) And, based on the contemporaneous accounts, we gave what we thought was the best answer.

Today, Newsweek's Michael "Spiky" Isikoff tackles the Huckabee dog-killing story. Using the enormous reportorial resources of the Washington Post operation, he adds some interesting data points, but he circles round the real question which is, again:

How, exactly, did Mike Huckabee's son David kill that dog?

With that, let's look at how Spiky moved the story forward, starting with the fact that Huckabee seems to be running Arkansas like a personal fiefdom for the benefit of his family members* instead of like, you know, an actual state of the Union governed by the rule of law:

Welcome, I heart Huckabee readers! Welcome, Planet Romney readers!

Here's the barebones story of how 17-year-old Mike Huckabee's son, David, and 18-year-old Clayton Frady killed a dog when they were Boy Scouts, and got fired for it.* From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1998 (as quoted in DogBlog):

[David Huckabee,] the younger son of Gov. Mike Huckabee and another teen were fired last month from jobs at a Boy Scout camp after the killing of a stray dog.

So, why were they fired? For violating Scout Law.

Marcal Young of Texarkana, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operates the camp where the dog was killed, said this week that two boys violated a Scout law, “A Scout is kind.”

So, how and why did David Huckabee (and Clayton Frady) kill the dog?

Mike Huckabee:

"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."

Imagine if a candidate said that his governance wasn't going to provide answers to our country's problems, but astrology would. All we need is to deeply believe in Linda Goodman's "Star Signs."

(via)

A stocking stuffer:

Oddly, or not, the forthcoming Times article treats Huckabee's weight loss uncritically. But if The God Of His Choice put Huckabee first in the polls, why didn't God just staple Huckabee's stomach for him? Or was it possible there was a less divine form of intervention, from a surgeon with a staple gun?

From the wonderful, hilarious Arkansas Times, some disturbing questions:

An obscure blog raises one of the most enduring Arkansas urban legends -- that Mike Huckabee was assisted by some form of surgery in his weight loss, if not a gastric bypass procedure, perhaps the less invasive lapband. The long post includes a quote I'd never seen before from his press secretary Alice Stewart (emphasis supplied):

"Even if Governor Huckabee had lost weight by having bariatric surgery, there would be no shame in that,” says Alice Stewart, press secretary for the Mike Huckabee Exploratory Committee. “[But the] fact is that the governor’s weight loss program was very well documented by the media. [Well, that's sorted, then!] Steve Barnes of Time Magazine [Doesn't Joe Klein work, or type, there?] interviewed the governor as well as his doctors.”

Anyway, this is but a supposition based on abundant circumstantial evidence, including the almost-unheard-of-success (scientific data supplied) of maintaining weight loss from diet programs vs. surgical intervention. Given the nature of the Internet -- and the fact that a reporter from a major national publication asked me about this very topic in a phone call yesterday -- I'm guessing we may be near a categorical answer to this long lingering folklore.

Perhaps, too, this would be an occasion to ask the governor about another lingering weight question. In an earlier dramatic, and unsuccessful, weight loss, did he use the prescription fen-phen drug combination or its equivalent (another long-standing bit of Huckabee folklore) that was subsequently found to cause heart damage in many users? Was he examined? Did he file a claim in the massive class action lawsuit over the drug?

Will the governor, as Republican presidential nominee, release complete medical records?

You know, when I read this comment over at Carpetbagger, I just couldn't believe it. But it was true! Get a load of this! Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Documents that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, describe the destruction of the computer drives, as ordered by Hucklebee's office, and Huckabee complaining strongly about his cell phone and Blackberry not working.

A memo dated Jan. 9 from a state Department of Information Systems official to Huckabee told of the "disposition of data maintained"by the department "for the office of the governor"during Huckabee's tenure.

"All drives have been subsequently crushed under the supervision of a designee of your office," wrote Gary Underwood, the agency's chief technology officer and a former Huckerbee staff member.

Of course, Huckably did keep backups:

Turns out Hucklebee's running off a 71 million-sized mailing list developed from showing The Passion.

FDL:

The gentleman adjusted his rabbit-fur jacket collar, crossed his legs dramatically, and declaimed: "Well, if I were forced to cast a ballot today, I am quite certain I should vote for... [oleaginous, dead-eyed] Mike Huckabee." My fiance stirred quietly at my side, in the universally-recognized-by-couples signal for: We are at a party, damnit, not having some blog conversation, so behave yourself, please.

But I had to know -- here was the phenomenon staring me in the face. The Huckabee voter is elusive in San Francisco. That this supporter was also wearing a rabbit-fur pillbox hat and Uggs could not dissuade my natural curiosity: What makes people support Mike Huckabee? Specifically, what could possibly lead an African-American homosexual who lives in Pacific Heights and Brussels to support Mike Hucklebee? ...

Sure, Rudi Giuliani is the President I most fear of the GOP candidates. But, based on last night's conversation, Mike Huckabee is the candidate I most fear of the GOP candidates. I learned he has a crossover, underhanded, apolitical, stubborn, faith-based, unreal appeal unlike, perhaps, any of our Democratic candidates. And I'm scared of him. Thanks to the gentleman in the rabbit-fur pillbox hat.

Plus, the weight loss.

Put down your coffee! Oleaginous, dead-eyed Mike Huckabee claims God's endorsement.

Can't somebody make it stop?

[Screams. Breaking glass. Bubbling, as of head in bucket of water.]

NOTE Is "dead-eyed" being unfair to Hucklebee? The man reminds me of the kind of undertaker who tries to upsell you on a coffin for your "loved one" because if you don't go for the mahogany, you didn't love them enough.

Now that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has compared himself to Jesus Christ perhaps he should inquire, "What would Jesus do about victims of AIDS."

Clearly, that was not Huckabee's train of thought back in 1992.   Read more…

Being a professional journalist is a tough job.

The news media establishment — which did such yeoman work emasculating Al Gore and disrespecting John Kerry's service to our country — has invested its energies into crafting a "Nice Guy" image for Mike Huckabee.

It's hard work creating and mindlessly repeating shallow memes until every soccer-mom and -dad has learned them by heart.

When you thought Scooter Libby should pay for his crimes like any other convict — maybe even more so, because he abetted the wrongful killings of hundreds of thousands of people and helped shatter our nation's intelligence apparatus — the media told you that you wanted him to go free. Think of how it would have hurt their feelings if they'd looked at the polls that showed you'd come to the wrong conclusion.

How about a little compassion, folks? What are you going to do next, ask Joe Klein to read the legislation he writes about? Thoughtless bastards, you are!

Quoth the Huckster:

"What people do in the privacy of their own lives as adults is their business," Huckabee said. "If they bring it into the public square and ask me as a taxpayer to support it or to endorse it, then it becomes a matter of public discussion and discourse."

What a great argument for debating the increasing role of religion in elections and in government policy and spending!

Oh, wait. He just meant it was OK to be a hateful homophobe.

The affable compassionate conservative once urged that people with HIV be quarantined and for celebrities to foot the bill for finding a cure ("...it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified"). He also said, in the sweetest possible way, no doubt:

Most Americans aren't too bothered by religion, as long as it's Christianity (Excel spreadsheet), of course.

At worst, they think it's a benign cultural force, and at best it's the only way to a moral life and a fireproof afterlife.

Few Democrats fret when Obama plays with a deck of 52 religion cards.

And, Lord knows, being BFFs with Jesus has been berry, berry good to George W. Bush.

Our cultural taboos about criticizing religion keep stories like this from properly freaking out our countryfolk: