This is from an interview with CNS, published today. They were obviously looking for Huckabee to support the teaching of religion in public schools, and although he tried to back and weave, he gave them what they wanted. The CNS lead:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate, told Cybercast News Service that he supports tuition tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools and that public schools ought to teach children, as per the Declaration of Independence, that there is a God and that our rights come from Him.
Specific excerpts:
On school prayer
Should students be able to pray in school? Absolutely. Student-led prayer should be constitutionally protected because I think it is constitutionally protected. What I don't think is protected is to have the school dictate what the prayer is because I'm afraid in this kind of culture we live in you will have some namby-pamby squishy thing that doesn't even resemble a prayer.
On teaching about God (Questions in bold)
Shouldn't our public schools at least recognize that there is a God, and that our rights come from God, and that the ultimate source of our law is God?
Absolutely, and that's what our Declaration of Independence said. That's what our Founding Fathers believed. And we shouldn't have a revisionist history that denies the part of our spiritual heritage.
So the public schools should teach children there is a God, and our rights come from God? They should teach them that?
If they teach our history, they have to teach that. But they don't have to teach them how they are going to specifically believe in that God. That's where the line comes.
Huckabee's clearly trying to have it both ways - make it sound like he supports the teaching of what the founders said. However, as the CNSNews Editor in Chief, Terence P. Jeffrey, gets specific, he agrees with the interviewer that public schools should teach that "there is a God."
This guy should never have gotten this far. Frightening.