A look at Mike Huckabee’s improved standing in the polls, and the challenges he still faces:

(Delayed about 5 hours due to technical difficulties. Sorry)

That’s what one nice old lady in Iowa told me when I asked her how she was so sure Barack Obama was a Muslim. “My Right-Wing Dad” is an archive of such shady emails; right now it’s just grimly amusing, but I could see it developing into a politics-centered snopes, perhaps specializing in the kind of flotsam that most MSM organizations …

With the confirmation that the Iowa Democratic caucuses will be held especially early this cycle, NBC reports that Hillary Clinton is adding 100 more staffers in Iowa — and Ambinder notes that they’re collecting some of these staffers via Craigslist. Insert “Now Bill’s not the only one setting up casual encounters” joke here.

In …

A while back, we told you we were planning to move to a registration system. Since then, with the troll incursions here getting worse and worse, many of you have been wondering what happened to that idea. We are happy to announce, it is here–finally! Try it out. The High Sheriffs promise it is quick, easy and painless.

Mike Huckabee has hit ten percent in a national poll, an accomplishment that a Corner correspondent puts in perspective:

I mean, he’s spent less than $2 million, compared to Romney’s $52 million, and is only 2% behind him in the national poll, and only 7 % behind him in Iowa, according to Rasmussen.

As if to solidify his status as …

Via Pollster, Mark Mellman has piece in The Hill analyzing the myths of Iowa that don’t have to do with baseball fields and James Earl Jones, but it’s an ironically idealistic form of mythbusting: He argues that message counts as much as organization, and that passion matters as much (or more) than electability. Somewhere, John Edwards …

And Brian Kennedy, spokesman to GOP House Leader John Boehner, notes jubilantly:

The cosmetic adjustments Democrats made to the SCHIP bill changed one GOP vote: Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) switched from a YES on the last Dem bill to a NO today. Not quite the result the majority had intended.

· Not a single Republican changed

…

Just a bit of commentary about the news that both the Republican and the Democratic Iowa caucuses will be happening January 3 — the earliest caucus date ever.

Jay Newton-Small has this on one of the Capitol’s most irascible–and interesting–characters.