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- Mitt Romney will deliver a speech on Mormonism tomorrow after much debate within his campaign. The speech is thought to be a risk, but may be necessary to counter Mike Huckabee's faith-based surge in Iowa.
- Huckabee, meanwhile, is condemning a 527 that has been attacking other candidates on the phone and in direct mailings on his behalf Iowa.
- Huckabee has come out against water boarding.
- Despite that stance, a shadowy group is attacking Huckabee as a fake Christian because -- see if you can follow this -- he hasn't been tough enough on illegal immigration which is tanamount to stealing which is a violation of the eighth commandment. Next they'll be saying that immigrants cause leprosy (as Lou Dobbs has) and therefore are unclean in the eyes of the Lord.
- Karl Rove, meanwhile, continues his quest to make his former boss look as much like Don Corleone as possible. Today he said that Republican candidates who are "disrespectful" of the president will "pay a price."
- Did I miss a secret media conspiracy memo about Don Imus being non-controversial again? Because Both Huckabee and Bill Richardson were on his show today (it apparently went back on the air yesterday). John McCain and Chris Dodd were on yesterday. Maybe someone might want to ask them why they've appeared on a show hosted by a man who refers to Hillary Clinton as "Satan." Especially Richardson. Oh, and Imus's new contract is for five years so we're going to have plenty of Don for years to come.
- Obama says that his campaign is a startup wheras Clinton's is Microsoft. That seems exaggerated to me, I'd say he's closer to Google. Or maybe she's Coke and he's Pepsi. Or... well this could go on for a while, put your suggestion in the comments.
- Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has run out of free tickets for an event with the candidate and Oprah in South Carolina after giving out 18,000. Seems like that endorsement might be useful after all.
- Confused by the Clinton/Obama leadership PAC kerfluffle? CQ has a great explanation of what they are and what a candidate can legally use them for.
- Giuliani campaign adviser Norman Podhoretz speculates with "moderate confidence" that the newly released NIE is a deliberate forgery by the intelligence community. That's some extra-strength industrial-size crazy.
- In other NIE/presidential campaign news Joe Biden points out that Bush has had this report for several months but has continued to act as if he believed he had good evidence that Iran was continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
--Sam Boyd