For some time now, many critics of Governor Huckabee have questioned his commitment to appointing conservative justices/judges as president.

Well, Governor Huckabee has finally updated his website to address this issue directly:

One of the greatest ongoing threats to our constitutional republic is the ever-increasing politicization of the federal judiciary. Instead of interpreting the law according to its plain or original meaning, many judges are using the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress as a mere pretense for imposing their policy preferences on the American people. This is unacceptable. The role of a judge is to interpret the law, not to legislate from the bench; and as president, I will only appoint men and women who share this view.

I firmly believe that the Constitution must be interpreted according to its original meaning, and flatly reject the notion of a “living Constitution.” The meaning of the Constitution cannot be changed by judicial fiat. The powers delegated to the federal government by the Constitution come from “We the People,” and judges have no right to prohibit the people from passing democratically-enacted laws unless we have explicitly authorized them to do so. Nor can vaguely-worded language in the Constitution be used by judges to give them power over subjects the framers never intended our founding document to address. As such, any interpretation of the Constitution that is based on “evolving standards of decency,” penumbras, or any other judicial fiction, is antithetical to the rule of law, and must be forcefully challenged.

As president, I will appoint justices and judges who not only share my judicial philosophy ( e.g., Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito), but who also have established themselves within the conservative legal community as faithful adherents of originalism and textualism. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise.

Finally, I wholeheartedly believe “that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be”; and I will do everything in my power as president to promote these cherished principles.

Now, I realize that I am biased, but that’s about as strong a statement as a judicial conservative could possibly hope for from a presidential candidate. So, while there are still reasons for many of you to oppose Governor Huckabee’s candidacy, I hope this issue is no longer one of them.

I like Duncan Hunter, but I’d like to point out that I received 3242 votes in one ward of one city for my City Council race.

Congressman Hunter has received a total of 1,744 votes in three states for his bid for the Presidency.

Congressman, you are an honorable man. I support your son for Congress. But sir, you are beclowning yourself to lash out at the media. This is not their problem sir. It is yours.

I’ll try to do a few of these. Below is a screen shot of what a front page post will look like on RedState if we can count on your help. My goal with this redesign was simple: make it not be cluttered.

All the time I speak at places about RedState. Inevitably, someone around the age of fifty will come up to me and say some variation of, “I like RedState, but it sure is hard to read and navigate.” So I asked our designers and developers to make it easier. Here’s just one example:

Read on . . .

Whatever the surprise in last night’s results, Barack Obama’s campaign appears to still be rolling along pretty well:

Despite losing Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Sen. Barack Obama secured the endorsement of the Culinary Workers union.

The endorsement of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers union is seen as the biggest get in Nevada, a state which votes Jan. 19.

At 11 p.m. E.T. on Tuesday, a 12-member panel which controls the 60,000-member Culinary Workers union held a conference call to decide which ‘08 candidate to endorse.

The panel making the decision is the executive committee of UNITE-HERE, Culinary’s parent union.

“We believe that Obama is the candidate who can bring the country together and we are proud to support his candidacy,” Shauna Hamel, Executive Vice President of the union says.

Obama is the likely favorite in Nevada as a result of endorsements like this one–though I will add that I have not seen any polls out of Nevada concerning the state of the race for Democrats. Still, this makes clear that Obama has hardly been shaken as a result of the loss in New Hampshire. He is still in a position to land some heavy blows on the Clinton campaign, even if Clinton goes on to win the nomination.

I suppose that it might be possible that the Clinton campaign somehow knew that it would win in New Hampshire despite all of the polls and all of the momentum going Barack Obama’s way. Perhaps the campaign allowed others to set expectations for Obama and was able to triumph not only by winning the vote in New Hampshire, but also by seeing those expectations upset.

I have a hard time believing that. I think the Clinton campaign was (happily) caught off guard. Chances are that there was a dramatic polling error, the nature of which is yet to be determined. In any event, I don’t think that what happened yesterday was the result of any Clintonian spinning. The victory in New Hampshire notwithstanding, the Clinton campaign revealed that it has a jutting glass jaw just asking for a punch. It is resourceful and tough but by no means is it ten feet tall. And I really don’t care if Hillary Clinton said that she “found [her] voice.” She is not good on the stump and she will lose her voice again as a consequence.

While there is not yet a monetary inducement for me to do something in or out of character, there really doesn’t have to be much of an inducement for me to write a paean to RedState.

As you can tell, I write here a lot. Writing is an itch of mine and I have to scratch it but writing just anywhere is hardly a rewarding enterprise. No. A good forum is a dream come true for any writer of his or her salt. A good forum, of course, means that more eyeballs linger on one’s writing. But it also means that a writer will be able to interact with a really smart, really talented, really passionate and really well-informed audience.

RedState is such a forum. I have been privileged to be associated with it since the day of its launch and I can’t tell you what a joy it is to be able to interact with readers who know their stuff, who will challenge me and my arguments and who grace RedState with insights that enhance and elevate the discourse. My fellow Contributors are wonderful people; I have only met five of them but all of them are family as far as I am concerned and each of them invests heart and soul in this site.

That is particularly true of people like Erick, who have been working so long and so hard on the creation and establishment of RedState 3.0. In all of our deliberations on the site, Erick has focused primarily on making RedState a dynamic and innovative website. A website worthy of its august readers.

This mission was and is a demanding one. It was intellectually demanding. It was logistically demanding. And it is financially demanding as well. And that’s because Erick and all of us who work with him want to give you the best website possible, a site that enhances this community.

Your contributions will go a long way towards helping us realize the best possible RedState we can. Please give. All of us who have been even remotely associated with the creation of RedState are very excited about the changes and innovations that are coming here. Those changes are worthy of your support.

The best damn blog readership around can help create the best damn blog around. Pitch in, and all of us can make it happen.

With Roger Wicker being named a United States Senator, there is an opening on the Appropriations Committee for the U.S. House of Representatives. The Republicans get the fill the seat. The Republican leadership has a great opportunity to prove that it is serious about earmark reform and a conservative approach to spending. Its time to put some action behind their rhetoric.

Rep. Tom Cole, the Chairman of the NRCC, the campaign arm of the House Republicans, claims that putting him on the Appropriations Committee will help improve Republican fundraising successes. That, in and of itself, should tell you everything you need to know about why Tom Cole is a poor choice.

We encourage you to call your Republican member of Congress (or the closest one to you if you don’t have one) and encourage them to support Rep. Jeff Flake for the Appropriations Committee.

The GOP will not earn the trust of voters again, until the GOP proves it is fiscally responsible. Jeff Flake has led the fight on the House floor against earmarks and wasteful spending. Jeff Flake gets it. Our party needs Jeff Flake as the face for reform on the Appropriations Committee. He is also one of the few men who could change the committee instead of the committee changing him.

The way this will work is the Republican Steering Committee will nominate someone. Generally, the Republican Conference as a whole rubber stamps that nomination. But it does not have to be that way. Already, Republican back benchers and members of the Republican Study Committee are gearing up for a fight to nominate Jeff Flake.

If the Steering Committee does not nominate Flake, the Conference can. Let’s help them out. Call your Republican member of Congress and encourage him or her to support Jeff Flake.

We will not take back the House of Representatives until we’ve taken back our principles. Jeff Flake on Appropriations is a good first step. As we said at the top of this post, the Republican leadership has a great opportunity to prove that it is serious about earmark reform and a conservative approach to spending. Its time to put some action behind their rhetoric.

When we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.

If wed been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there werent really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

Well, we didnt close down. We ditched Scoop and moved to the best alternative at the time, a program called Drupal. But, in accomplishing the switch, budget constraints forced us to sacrifice some popular site features in order to alleviate the strain on our overused servers.

Needless to say, we always regarded those downgrades as temporary, and we hoped to restore the eliminated features and to add new and even better ones as soon as we could afford to.

Unfortunately, we still cant afford to. But were convinced that America can afford even less to have us operating at anything less than our absolute peak potential during the coming presidential election season.

So weve decided to move ahead with our upgrades without delay, and despite not having the cash on hand hoping and praying that RedState.com readers like you will help us make up the shortfall with a generous donation.

Please read on for a preview and more begging . . .

Turnout looks high… 500,000!

It seems Ds are running out of ballots. That means in both IA and NH (swing states), Ds may be showing a major enthusiasm gap. Rs should start at least acknowledging that they may be facing another 2006. Nothing is set in stone, but it seems the Ds are starting with a significant advantage in 2008.

Put your comments, attacks, analysis, etc here.

[UPDATE 6:12 PM]: FoxNews just announced an election day poll (not an exit poll). I didn’t catch all of it, but here is what I saw:

McCain 35
Romney 34
Huck 12

Independents saying the are voting:
Repub 41
Demo 59

Is voting in R primary went:
McCain 36
Romney 24

The reporter said Romney leads in the oldest age bracket and McCain led among other age brackets.

Please let me know if any of these numbers are off, I’m doing it by memory.

McCain: 33%

Romney: 30%

Huckabee: 17%

Giuliani: 10%

Paul: 7%

Thompson: 3%