Yesterday, Mike Huckabee told Politico that he wants Mitt Romney to apologize to him, for telling lies about Huckabee's record. Imagine -- Romney apologize! Good one, Huckster!

It got me to thinking: has Mitt Romney ever actually been seen personally apologizing for anything? I know he has, on rare occasions, apologized through spokespeople (for use of the term "tar baby," for instance).

Against stiff competition -- personally, I think I would have gone with Giuliani's prostate-cancer data -- our own former governor Mitt Romney has been named the winner of the Washington Post Fact Checker blog's 2007 Pinocchio Award. His winning falsehood was the one exposed right here by yours truly: "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."

The Boston Globe today tells the tale of William Hayhurst III, who vaulted from 623rd to 1st on the Boston Fire Department hiring list thanks to a special law championed by state Senate President Therese Murray, described in the article as a friend of the Hayhurst family. Bostonians are worried enough about the state of the BFD these days without a pol from the Cape sticking her nose in and making patronage hiring decisions, don't you think?

If you don't know who John Hawkins is, you obviously don't spend much time in the conservative blogosphere. His regular blog is rightwingnews.com -- a highly-ranked site on its own accord -- and he also runs Conservative Grapevine. He is a regular columnist at Townhall.com. He has interviewed many of the country's leading conservative pols and pundits for his blog.

Barely an hour after I posted about a possible Joe Biden surge scenario, I received the latest press email from the Biden campaign, boasting that Biden is "gaining steam" in Iowa.

It goes on to say that: "Over the next week, Mo-Joe '08 will sweep across Iowa."

Turns out, he's been using the phrase "Mo-Joe" for the past week or so.

This isn't a prediction, but a possibility. My sense is that a lot of Democrats personally prefer Joe Biden, but haven't really considered "wasting" a vote on him.

He is in great position for a late surge in Iowa, particularly with the renewed focus on international affairs after the Bhutto assassination. I can easily see him finishing a strong fourth there, perhaps even in shouting range of John Edwards.

A certain political-science professor of my close acquaintence rues the imminent early end of Fred Thompson's Presidential campaign, because of the amazing, perhaps unprecedented, day-to-day disaster it has been. Yesterday, Thompson lowered his game to a new level yet again. Other candidates, in the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination, maneuvered to press the argument for their own foreign-policy credentials, without appearing to overly politicize it.

For anyone still wondering whether to believe the eyewitness accounts provided by the Romney campaign to Politico Friday, purporting to verify Martin Luther King Jr.'s presence with George Romney at a Grosse Pointe, Michigan, march on June 29, 1963 (King was actually in New Jersey at the time), I'll pass along this link to the Grosse Pointe News coverage of the march, in its July 4, 1963 edition.

Update: The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" has upgraded the Romney claims from two pinocchios ("significant omissions and/or exaggerations) to four pinocchios ("whopper").

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Two women contacted the Mitt Romney campaign this week, offering their memories of seeing Romney's father march with Martin Luther King Jr.

Politico's Mike Allen reports that two women claim to have seen Martin Luther King Jr. with George W. Romney, father of Mitt Romney, at the Grosse Pointe, Michigan march in 1963.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, speaking on the Howie Carr radio show this afternoon, spoke about the controversy. The Romney campaign provided this transcript to the Phoenix:

As of yesterday afternoon, Mitt Romney and his staff were still insisting that they believed George W. Romney marched with Martin Luther King Jr., conceding only that Mitt never literally saw it happen. By digging in like this, it appears they are only prolonging the story (originally broken by the Phoenix, here), because the evidence has piled up beyond the media tipping point.