The Politico’s David Paul Kuhn asked former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) what he thought of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Huckabee’s response? Hasn’t heard of it:

Reporter: 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?

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

Huckabee: No.

Reporter: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune also has the story:

“I don’t know where the intelligence is coming from that says that they suspended the program and how credible that is versus the news that they actually are expanding it,” [Huckabee] said. “And then I’ve heard the last two weeks supposed reports that say that they are accelerating and could be having a reactor in a much shorter period of time than originally they thought.”

UPDATE II: Hotline adds: “Huckabee’s ignorance of the news of the day, which not only dominated the Democrats’ debate here in town but also prompted a presidential press conference in response, came as Huckabee faced questioning about his foreign policy credentials on Don Imus’s new show. Huckabee joked that he’s ‘not an expert… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night‘ — a play on a current silly ad for a motel.”

UPDATE III: The National Review’s Byron York suggests Huckabee’s inability to afford “teams of advisers” and develop “carefully-thought-out policy positions” are to blame.

Digg It!

The Crypt reports:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has scheduled a committee vote Thursday on contempt resolutions against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential political guru Karl Rove for failing to respond to subpoenas.

Under Judiciary Committee rules, the vote could be postponed for a week, but Leahy said he intends to move the criminal contempt resolutions as soon as possible. Last week, he rejected the White House’s executive privilege claim in preventing Rove and Bolten from appearing before his panel, calling it “overbroad, unsubstantiated, and not legally valid,” setting the stage for Thursday’s showdown.

Yesterday’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, pouring cold water on neoconservative calls for bombing Iran. Like his ideological kin Norman Podhoretz, former U.N. ambassador and Iran war hawk John Bolton has been attempting to slander the U.S. intelligence community’s collective judgments.

Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons “for 20 years,” he defiantly declared today. To give weight to a single intelligence estimate “would be a mistake.” On Fox News today, Bolton went even further and called for a congressional investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies, stating that the report was politicized by intelligence officials who have their “own agenda”:

I really think the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have to look at how this NIE was put together because there are a lot unexplained points in here. [...]

I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.

Watch it:

“I’ve never based my view on this week’s intelligence,” Bolton proclaimed today. Just as he did before the Iraq war, Bolton is attempting to discredit any intelligence which contrasts with his fixation on more war in the Middle East.

While Bolton is calling for a congressional witch-hunt into the intelligence community, VoteVets is calling for an congressional investigation into the Bush administration for warning of a false Iran threat despite knowing the key findings of the NIE.

UPDATE: Digby parses out the perpetually wrong neocon worldview: “The real question is why anyone ever takes them seriously about anything.”

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. announced today that it has “acquired Beliefnet, the largest faith and spirituality information site on the Web, for an undisclosed sum.” Murdoch, who also recently bought Dow Jones & Co., will have access to Beliefnet’s roughly “3 million unique visitors each month and a daily email newsletter that reaches nearly 11 million subscribers.”

Spencer Ackerman reports that the State Department has quietly given bonuses for “outstanding performance” to two officials who had “direct oversight” over Blackwater:

On November 20, an internal cable, listed as State 158575, went out to State employees announcing the recipients of bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 for “outstanding performance.” Among them: Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage. You can read the cable here. Barry’s name is listed on page 2, and Sincavage’s is on page 5. Both Barry and Sincavage already earn approximately $150,000 annually. Their bonuses are scheduled to take effect on December 20, in time for the holidays.

In October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also promoted Barry and Sincavage.

I thought Ross was mostly right in his critique of Ed Kilgore’s take on Mitt Romney’s impending speech on Mormonism. But Ed rallies with this followup:

If, on the other hand, I’m “exactly wrong” and Douthat is “exactly right,” then Mitt Romney is truly screwed. What is he supposed to say about his religion? He can’t do the JFK separation-of-church-and-state bit; he’s in the wrong party at the wrong time of history for that approach. He can’t educate evangelicals about the tenets of the LDS church; aside from being a complex endeavor, that would probably alarm listeners even more than their current vague suspicions about the Mormon “cult.” So if he also can’t even appeal to the deep cultural conservative consanguinity of Mormons with evangelicals, he might as well cancel the speech and hope for the best.

And, indeed, Romney does seem truly screwed. There’s just no way to do what he’s doing. Mitt Romney, Mormon, worked back when “Mitt Romney” denoted a culturally moderate politician. But he decided that a culturally moderate politician couldn’t win a Republican Party presidential nomination, so he remade himself as a cultural conservative. But a culturally conservative Mormon is screwed outside of the Mormonism-heavy states of the West. And, obviously, the main driving force of his candidacy has always been the absence of alternatives who appeal to Christian conservatives anyway. He still has that going for him to some extent, so maybe he’ll somehow manage to muddle through. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for pro-life voters to remember this guy named John McCain.