NOVATOWNHALL

Yes, when you are a front runner “that’s part of the deal,” as the Huckster so aptly put it: People check to see whether your statements are true.

Welcome to the big leagues - that wacky, schizoid realm where you are supposed to tell the truth.

Unfortunately, the Washington Post has fact-checked Mike Huckabee and discovered what so many others have been saying for nearly a month: Huckabee is truth-challenged.

One leading rival, Fred Thompson, has accused Huckabee of having “championed” an effort to permit illegal immigrants to benefit from in-state tuition rates at state universities. Huckabee has denied the charge, claiming that his support was limited to a much more restrictive scholarship program….

During his annual “State of the State address” to the Arkansas state legislature in January 2005, Huckabee proposed making “any student graduating from a high school in Arkansas” eligible for state financial aid. He said it was “terribly unjust” to deny such aid solely on the basis of the student’s immigration status, “a status that he had no decision in and no control over.”

It is hard to fathom how redirecting limited state resources from legal residents to trespassers is “unjust” in any way at all. The operating assumption must be that the legal residents who lost out would never know to complain.