At an August 2007 forum on cancer hosted by cyclist and activist Lance Armstrong and moderated by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Huckabee said he supported a federal smoking ban.

“If you are president in 2009 and Congress brings you a bill to outlaw smoking nationwide in public places, would you sign it?” Matthews asked.

“I would, certainly would. In fact, I would, just like I did as governor of Arkansas, I think there should be no smoking in any indoor area where people have to work,” Huckabee responded, triggering applause from the crowd. Part of the interview has been posted on Youtube.com and viewed over 2,500 times.

Calling it a “workplace safety issue,” Huckabee added that the “same reason that we regulate that you can’t pour radon gas into a workplace is the same reason that we shouldn’t allow people to pour the toxic, noxious fumes of a cigarette into a place where people have to work.”

There is a lot to like about Senator McCain, and we do not fault the Union Leader for endorsing him. We do fault its double standards. The newspaper counts it as a damnable “flip-flop” every time Romney has changed his position or even his emphasis. McCain can switch his views on the very same issues without a disparaging word from the Union Leader.

Take taxes. Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, stayed neutral in the battle over President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. We wish he had spoken up in their favor. Senator McCain, alas, was not silent: He voted against the tax cuts, as he had voted against the 2001 tax cuts. He flip-flopped on estate taxes, defending them after having voted to get rid of them. As he geared up to run for president this time around, however, McCain became a born-again supply-sider. Now he wants to keep the tax cuts he originally opposed.

The Union Leader has blasted Romney for changing his mind on immigration. It accused him of lying, too, for saying that McCain wanted to let illegal immigrants earn Social Security benefits while working here illegally. But Romney was right. McCain has voted to let illegal immigrants who meet certain conditions become citizens and then receive benefits for their prior illegal work. Few Senate Republicans joined him.

We won’t throw around the word “lie” quite as recklessly as the Union Leader, but its candidate first argued for an “amnesty” and then spent months claiming that his immigration bill did not amount to one. And if flip-flopping on immigration is a crime, McCain can be charged with it, too. He himself says that he has changed his position on the issue. One of the principal points at issue in the debate over his bill was whether we should try “enforcement first.” Since the bill’s collapse, McCain has said that he now understands that we should. If that is not a flip-flop, it is only because his claims of a change of heart are insincere. (The liberal newspapers that have endorsed him seem to think so.)

In a little-noticed aspect of the Republican presidential debate Saturday night, fromer New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani set a new speed record for flip-flopping. Many candidates do so from one year to the next or perhaps one month to the next, but Guiliani did it from one sentence to the next.

The moment came when he joined Sen. John McCain in trying to assert, contrary to logic, that immigration amnesty is not in fact amnesty. Both McCain and Giuliani want to permit illegal aliens to avoid the penalty for illegal entry to the U.S., which is deportation.

That's amnesty. Period.

A national group plans to slam GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for renouncing his former support for abortion rights, in television and radio ads starting today.

The Republican Majority for Choice ads titled "Flip-Flop Mitt" are to air on Fox News and Christian radio stations, said Duncan MacVicar, spokesman for the group.

The ads accuse Romney of repeatedly changing his position on abortion. "He flipped...he flopped...he flipped again," suggesting "he can't be trusted," the ads say.