Huckabee's phone call from God. sm

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Here is Novak's recent article on him. Creepy. Reminds me a little of a wolf in sheep's clothing. I think it is important to get the opinions of those people in the districts politicians serve. Those opinions on Huckabee are not very good.

Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the motive force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is no doubt about Huckabee's record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he decided to lose 100 pounds and pressed his new lifestyle on the American people, he was far from a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax and has more recently signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit in normal boundaries of economic conservatism, as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed the cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of "growth" with "greed." Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute for his record as governor. On Fox News Sunday Nov. 18, he called the "tactics" of the Club for Growth "some of the most despicable in politics today. It's why I love to call them the Club for Greed because they won't tell you who gave their money." In fact, all contributors to the organization's political action committee (which produces campaign ads) are publicly revealed, as are most donors financing issue ads.

Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas journalist writing in the conservative American Spectator, called Huckabee "a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak." Huckabee's retort was to attack Hillyer's journalistic procedures, fitting a mean-spirited image when he responds to conservative criticism.

Nevertheless, he is getting remarkably warm reviews in the news media as the most humorous, entertaining and interesting GOP presidential hopeful. Contrary to descriptions by old associates, he is now called "jovial" or "good-natured." Any Republican who does not sound much like a Republican is bound to benefit from friendly media support, as Sen. John McCain did in 2000 but not today with his return to being more like a conventional Republican.

An uncompromising foe of abortion can never enjoy full media backing. But Mike Huckabee is getting enough favorable buzz that, when combined with his evangelical base, it makes real conservatives shudder.

I didn't agree with Mike Huckabee politically, but I always found him to be incredibly gracious and authentic. He had Coulter on his show (aptly followed by Jerry Springer, who ironically brought CIVILITY to the show.) and confronted her about the lies she published about HIM in her book.

If you scroll down the first page, you'll see the Springer segment. I believe when Huckabee referred to "authenticity" while speaking to Springer, he was referring to Coulter. At least, that's how it came across to me.

I didn't agree with Mike Huckabee politically, but I always found him to be incredibly gracious and authentic. He had Coulter on his show (aptly followed by Jerry Springer, who ironically brought CIVILITY to the show) and confronted her about the lies she published about HIM in her book.

Looks like one of your own started the modern NSA wiretaps. I think the Democrats fail to realize there's this thing out there called the Internet and not just the bullhorn of the leftist media to give the peasants amnesia to what they've done in the past.

In 1994 Sen. Pat Leaky Leahy co-wrote a law that forced telecommunications carriers to build convenient wiretap features into their networks enabling the kind of telephone records collection now at the heart of the controversy over the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance operation.

In recent days Leahy has called the NSA's actions troubling and potentially illegal - saying they show that the Bush administration is treating Americans like terrorists.

'The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans? he exclaimed after USA Today blew the lid off the program last week. Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?

But according to the Rutland Herald, Leahy was singing a different tune 12 years ago, when he was pushing the Senate to pass his bill, the Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act [CALEA].

I suggest to senators if anybody does want to hold [CALEA] up, I hope that at this time next year, neither they nor their constituents, nor anybody they know, is a kidnap victim or victim of a terrorist, and have somebody ask why nothing can be done, and be told because a law that had probably 99 percent support in the House and the Senate did not pass.

Contacted by the Herald earlier this week, Leahy said there was an important difference between what his law authorized and the actions taken by the Bush administration.

That law talks of the technology of the interception and what technology can be used to intercept and it assumes very clearly that it can only be done with a warrant, the Vermont Democrat insisted.

Some legal experts say, however, said that assumption is not as clear as Leahy claims. Analyzing CALEA in 2003, the Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal explained:

CALEA requires a telecommunications provider to make 'its equipment, facilities, or services ... capable of ... enabling the government ... [without a warrant] to intercept ... all wire and electronic communications carried by the carrier.'

The secret search and wiretap provisions could lead to an age of Big Brother-like surveillance, the American Civil Liberties Union complained in the same Law Journal report. Americans who oppose U.S. policies and who are believed to have ties to foreign powers could find their homes broken into and their telephones tapped.

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 10, 4:55 PM ET

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 � as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was preposterous to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls � mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office � between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.

There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.

Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors tried a very narrow case, said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.

The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day.

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts, White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington, Kelner said.

If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day, he said.

You're making dinner and trying to sit down with your family to eat after an exhausting work week and pouring over your 401K loss report. You have just found out that the $42,000 you had accumulated as of last spring is now worth $26,040. You've just turned off the burner under the hot veggies when, BRRRINNNGGGG, the phone rings. It's the McCain campaign delivering an urgent message to you in the privacy of your own home, assuming you never listen to network news, read a paper or go on line and are unaware of their latest breaking news....telling you that Barack Obama is a terrorist who hangs with other terrorists, on the off chance that it might capture your previously uncommitted vote. If it happened to me, I would be up with the chickens Monday morning at the early voting polls telling every single peson within earshot that I had just voted a straight Dem ticket. How dare they?

yourself a saint, for all I care. How do you get your arm back there to pat yourself on the back? You are more sensitive than others. Thanks for letting us know. If you hadn't told us we might have missed it.