"You don't back down!"

I'm still an "Anyone But Rudy" guy... but there are things I like about him. This ad is one slick, if not ill-timed reminder of one thing I do admire about the Mayor..."

Now about that police overtime for your adulterous hunnies...

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday ...
 
Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Huckabee — who raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution — asked this time why there is such a fascination with his beliefs.

"I believe God created the heavens and the Earth," he said at a news conference with Iowa pastors who murmured, "Amen."

"I wasn't there when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know," Huckabee said.

But he expressed frustration that he is asked about it so often, arguing with the questioner that it ultimately doesn't matter what his personal views are.

“When confronted with a serious question about his lack of foreign policy experience, Mike Huckabee makes a joke. The security of Americans and our allies is no laughing matter. What Americans are looking for in their next president is a commander in chief, not a Court Jester,” added Bob Haus, Executive Director of Iowa Friends of Fred Thompson.

I spoke to Rasmussen about Huckabee's rapid rise yesterday, and our chat can be found here. Key quote: "Had anybody else resonated with GOP primary voters, this would have been impossible. What Mike Huckabee is doing is validating the dream of Thompson’s supporters -  that there was a vacuum or void in the race, but Thompson didn’t grab it for whatever reason."

His campaign headquarters in downtown Des Moines is expanding into another office in the same building. The new space is three times bigger to accommodate the surging crew of volunteers.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a one-time Southern Baptist preacher who's seen his standing in Iowa surge with Christian evangelicals' support, wouldn't say Tuesday whether he thought Mormonism — rival Mitt Romney's religion — was a cult.

"I'm just not going to go off into evaluating other people's doctrines and faiths. I think that is absolutely not a role for a president," the former Arkansas governor said during a week in which religion has become an important issue in the Republican presidential race, particularly in Iowa.

Listen "LIVE" - 2-4p EST
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Iran threat lowered by NIE...
Woman found 'Not Guilty' in internet message 13 year old's suicide...

2pm:
Christians have done an exceedingly bad job of defining ourselves and how we live and what we believe to the world around us if Barbara Walters can't even tell the difference. "Would Americans riot if we allowed a kindergarten teacher to name a bear 'Jesus'?" The shrews on 'The View' then spent the time disecting the issue in their own ways. And while it is one of the silliest conversations I've ever heard of for American television - it begged the question of real Christians, "Why are we living so poorly that the great reporter Barbara Walters can't see the difference?" The V-man disagrees with me saying he believe's it is the squelching of the truth in the non-believer's life that causes them not see the difference - but I firmly believe it is ineffective Christians causing the disconnect. 800.345.WMCA.


Divorce contributes to Global Warming...

3pm:
Survey says, "people prefer couples where the women keep their trap shut!" But why? Scientists say it has to do with negative stereotypes of being anything other than the traditional norm. I struggle - or at least used to struggle with this a bit more than I do now. I generally prefer to listen to the conversations when we go out to socialize. When I am dragged into the conversation I will even qualify it by saying, "do you really want my honest opinion" - because of what I do for a living. How do people in your own circle of friends fit into this survey? Think of the couples you have in your inner circle - are they dominated by overly verbally dominant women? If you do have a negative reaction to such couples - does it have anything to do with how the woman communicates? And I'm asking these questions of both men and women... 800.345.WMCA.

3:55pm: The McCULLOUGH PUNCH
Investigating the Christian-Cons!

Weekdays 2-4pm EST
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"Welcome to coh-ffeee tawhk, I will give you a tawpik..."

Obama's pulling a play from the Clinton administration playbook. He wants to chit chat with terrorists while they send out the song and dance to our face, doing only God knows what behind the scenes.

"We are willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith," he said. "I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hell bent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior."

It's not the first time such liberal "symbolism" has been tried over "susbtance." And we all remember how well that turned out...

I proffered the moral dilema that Columbia University has faced over the last couple of days pretending to be so utterly offended and outraged by the hangman's noose on an African American professor's door while allowing one of the biggest signs of racism and bigotry to be given supreme limelight and a featured guest speaker only days previously.

In my e-mail bag I got this today...

Hello, Mr. McCullough:

I wanted to submit a comment on your post "Columbia U: Nazi Terrorists welcome, Klansmen not...", but was unable to do so and decided to email you instead.

You miss a fundamental distinction between the noose incident and President Ahmadinejad's speech.  Leaving the noose was a threat of violence against Prof. Constantine.  It was more than just speech that she found offensive; it was a crime just like any other credible threat of violence. (This is true even if it turns out not to rise to the level of a hate crime.)  Ahmadinejad said highly offensive things to be sure, but he didn't tell his audience to fear that he would kill them. 

There is a world of difference between offending someone and threatening them with harm.  The law recognizes this difference, and so does common sense.  It's easy to draw false equivalencies, but I hope you will see things differently in light of my comments.

Kindly,
Ed

Here's why I believe Ed is mistaken... To believe that fundamentally somehow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents something, somehow more benign than the noose is ignorant.

A noose was used to send the message to blacks in the Reconstruction and post-reconstruction era's that the "better play the game" or "get in line." It was actually used as a tool to "recruit" (more like threaten) blacks to join the Democratic party of the early 1900's. It was used to intimidate people who had been freed because of laws following the civil war in which every single guarantee of the U.S. Constitution was extended to people who had previously had them kept from them. 

Democrats knew that the Republican anti-slavery, anti-klan, and anti-segregation laws were beloved by blacks and that it gave Republicans a sizable voting block that blacks saw with their own eyes could be trusted because of their attempts to even the playing field. 

The racist Democrats - did several things in that era - they founded the Ku Klux Klan, began lynchings, rape, and hangings to intimidate blacks to vote with them, and simultaneously started taking away the voting, commerce, freedom of association and gathering - and dozens more rights that had been conferred upon them post civil war. 

The "noose" was vital to this effort. It is a despicable sign that represents the most vile period of our own history. A period in which democrats would kill to threaten people into submission - and later testify before Congress in the "Klan Hearings" that they were proud of those methods used.

But I ask you to consider how that can be any more morally offensive than Ahamdinejad speaking to a group of Jews and Americans who he has threatened with complete annihiliation nearly a dozen times over the past two years? Ed's e-mail claimed that Ahmadinejad was merely "offensive" while the noose represented violence and murder. 

Does threatening to nuke Israel off the map not just constitute murder but MASS murder not qualify by the most legal and strict understanding of the words - a worse crime? 

I think it does. And Columbia yawned at it - and told him to come speak anyway.

Columbia University can't have it both ways. You can't feign indignation at some symbols of violence and murder and yet yawn at others. Since you are reportedly an institution of higher learning  such hypocrisy sends the distinct double message that "blacks" are a protected race while "jews" aren't.

And that is every bit as offensive as allowing the practice of slavery, the birth of the klan, and the use of intimidation in the political process - as the Democratic party did. ("Does" actually - remembering that the Democratic Party to this day has never condemned the actions of the Klan...)

President Bush:

"If we left before the job was done, there would be chaos," Bush said about withdrawing U.S. troops prematurely from Iraq. "Chaos would embolden not only the extremists and radicals that would like to do us harm, but it would also embolden Iran. What you don't want is to have a nuclear arms race taking place in the Middle East."

He denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his remarks about destroying Israel.

(AP) President Bush, left, is escorted to Air Force One by Brig. Gen. Margaret Woodward at Andrews Air... Full Image

"In Iran, we're dealing with a country where the leader has said that he wants to destroy Israel," Bush said. "My belief is that the United States will defend our ally Israel. This is a leader who has made very provocative statements. And, we have made it clear, however, that in spite of that, we are willing to sit down with him, so long as he suspends his program."

"In other words, it's his choice, it's not mine anymore. So I believe that's the best way to achieve an objective," the president added.

"If your question is, will you ever sit down with them? We've proven we would with North Korea. And the answer is yeah, just so long as we can achieve something, so long as we are able to get our objective."

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad Monday.

At America’s universities, brazenly provocative and astonishingly educated has proven to be the dumbest mix of all.

In the words of everyday New Yorkers - who took a stand this week!

Some of those views, such as his position that the Holocaust did not happen and that the state of Israel should be destroyed, have sparked international fury and have made his trip here to attend the United Nations General Assembly session contentious even before it starts.

Last week, Ahmadinejad made headlines by asking for permission to lay a wreath at Ground Zero.

"Usually, you go to these sites to pay your respects," Ahmadinejad said in the interview. "And also to perhaps air your views about the root causes of such incidents."

The American people still don’t know who was behind the bombing of the Twin Towers. Many books in the U.S. have been written about the incident., and there are questions circling in your society. Once you go back, go to the streets, ask the local people who was behind this, what were the reason for that? And, again, I fail to see why you continually say “the American people.“ I have the latest surveys. Eighty percent of the American citizens say that the American government knew about the attack beforehand. [This figure is almost certainly bogus. — ed.] They had information…

"If I were a president of the university, I would not have invited him," Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "He's a Holocaust denier. He's a supporter of terrorism. But I also respect the right in our country to make different decisions."

He's scheduled to travel tomorrow... He's STILL scheduled to visit Ground Zero. He's scheduled to speak at Columbia University, and of course to insult us at the United Nations.

So during his final 24 hours prior to his arrival he decides to strike this kind of tone:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A day before flying to New York to speak directly to the American people, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a confrontational tone Saturday with a parade of fighter jets and missiles and tough warnings for the United States to stay out of the Mideast.

Three new domestically manufactured warplanes streaked over the capital during the parade marking the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which sparked a 1980-88 war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The parade also featured the Ghadr missile, which has a range of 1,120 miles, capable of reaching Israel.

Some of the missile trucks were painted with the slogans "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel." The parade also featured unmanned aerial surveillance drones, torpedoes, and tanks.

Little Green Footballs reported late in the day Friday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still on his way to GROUND ZERO Monday.

(I personally never bought the partial transcript from 60 Minutes anyway...)

We're rolling out the wagon to "greet" him.

Liberty St. and Broadway 9am - I will be there.

We need you in place no later than 9:30am. If you're coming by train - WTC stop for PATH and NY Subway.