Arkansans Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee grew up in the same town and enjoy unique communication skills. The image of them in the same pew on Martin Luther King day is laden with messages. More in a moment.

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Huckabee is shopping for February 5th states and Georgia is high on his list. A visit to the Ebeneezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King ministered fits neatly into Huckabee’s desired profile of a conservative Republican with cross-over appeal among Democrats and Independents.

It rarely works but the Daily Kos is urging Democrats to cross over on January 15th primary and vote for Mitt Romney Michigan is a walk-in registration state. The democratic candidates are boycotting Michigan to honor the DNC calendar rules. Cross over voting to mess with the opposition is talked about every cycle in situations like this and it seldom has the slightest impact. The goal here is to help Mitt Romney and thereby hurt John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

To read the article and the email that Markos wants democrats to send out go to: The Daily Kos

One of the quirks of the Black and Brown Forum is that candidates are allowed to question other candidates… and as in past years, candidates are using the feature mostly to talk about themselves.

Bill Richardson may have thought he had a clever way to play up his unique experience as Governor, running against a group of legislators — running through former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s accomplishments as governor and president and asking Senator Clinton “Don’t you think Governors make good presidents?”

After joining the crowd and Richardson himself in a hearty round of laughter, Hillary joked, “Well, Bill, I also think they make good vice presidents.”

Most people think the life of a producer embedded with a presidential campaign is really like that of a rock star… lots of partying then sleeping in, loads of adoring fans, decadent behavior and hotel trashing. Well, they’re right — at least about the hotel trashing.

But the day-to-day grind of covering one presidential candidate — hitting as many events as you can when you’re chasing their private plane in your rented Chevy Malibu — does take something of a toll. Check out this short piece showing just a little of life behind the scenes as an embed.

With about five weeks to go before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, the latest Fox News poll in the state shows the race on both sides tightening. On the Republican side, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney continues to hold a lead but Rudy Giuliani and John McCain remain within striking distance, according to the poll of likely Republican primary voters.

Mitt Romney 29%
John McCain 21%
Rudy Giuliani 19%
Mike Huckabee 7%

For more on GOP…

Among likely Democratic primary voters, Sen. Hillary Clinton is seeing a softening in her lead with Sen. Barack Obama closing in on the party front-runner.

Hillary Clinton 30%
Barack Obama 23%
John Edwards 17%
Bill Richardson 12%

For more on Dems…

The telephone poll was conducted for FOX News by Opinion Dynamics Corp. among 1,000 likely presidential primary voters in New Hampshire, including 500 likely Democratic primary voters and 500 likely Republican primary voters, from Nov. 27 to Nov. 29. The entire poll has a 3-point error margin overall and a 4 point error for the subgroups of Democratic and GOP presidential primary voters.

Full Results (PDF)

Eyewitness reports say a man walked into Hillary’s campaign headquarters in Rochester with what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest, and demanded to speak with Hillary Clinton. He’s now holding at least two hostages in the building.

Clinton was not there; she’s in the Washington, DC area, and was set to speak to a meeting of the Democratic National Committee. She’s since canceled that speech because of the news.

Rochester police have been in contact with the hostage taker, who has released a mother and child.

Both Barack Obama’s Rochester office two doors down, and John Edwards office have been evacuated as well. A campaign staffer in Virginia said they were still working on getting all the details, but as far as he knew no one had been hurt.

We will keep this spot updated with the latest breaking news.

UPDATE: Manchester, NH TV station WMUR reports that around 1pm, a man in his 40’s with salt and pepper hair entered the headquarters. Two volunteers and a woman with an infant were inside; he told the two volunteers to get on the floor and released the woman and her child. She went next door and instructed shop owners there to call 911.

UPDATE 2: Police say the two hostages have been released, and the situation is fluid but stabilized. No one has been hurt.

Check out some of Carl Cameron’s reporting from the scene.

Hillary Clinton defended her attacks on Barack Obama’s lack of experience, despite saying that Democrats should refrain from slinging mud at other Democrats at the Las Vegas debate — saying there are real differences on qualifications and issues that voters should be made aware of.

The main issue she’s beating Obama over the head with here in Iowa? Health Care. Today in Perry, she went after him by name, telling reporters that, “there’s a big difference between Senator Obama and me on health care. I have a health care plan that covers every American, he does not. I have a plan that will leave no Americans out, he by his own admission leaves at least 15 million people out.”

But she went even further, accusing Obama of flip-flopping on the issue. “It’s been kind of confusing following his description of his own plan,” she said. “If you go back and look, he said it was universal, he said it was sort of universal, he said it wasn’t universal. He said it covered everybody, he said it didn’t cover 15 million. He has a mandate for kids, now he’s against mandates.” She added, “I think you’re going to have to ask him what his plan actually does.”

Check out the video.

After delivering a speech on his education policy at Manchester’s Central High School, Obama dropped by a study hall class on his way out to say hi to students and take a couple questions. His staff made sure the slew of reporters following the candidate on his bus tour through the Granite State were on hand to watch the candidate address the class. For the most part, the students had intelligent questions about issues like No Child Left Behind and his first objective as president.

It wasn’t until Principal John Rist asked the senator to “give us a human side” when things got interesting.

Obama candidly talked about experimenting with drugs, drinking, and thinking about girls when he was a high school student in Hawaii – all subjects he’s admitted to and written about in his book, “Dreams of my Father,” but topics he doesn’t talk about often in front of cameras.

Take a look:

Hillary Clinton threw a stiff jab at Barack Obama via speakerphone from Omaha, NE today — where her plane was forced to touch down after two aborted landings near her event in Shenandoa, IA due to fog.

More than half of the standing room only Iowa crowd had filed out before she landed the punch, but it was still a strong one: after taking on Obama’s economic experience yesterday, Hillary continued to pummel Obama on foreign policy experience, saying “With a war and a tough economy, we need a President ready on Day One to bring our troops home from Iraq and to handle all of our other tough challenges.

“Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face. I think we need a President with more experience than that.”

Obama spent much of his childhood in Indonesia, and said yesterday in Iowa that “probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas as a child in Southeast Asia.”

In response, Obama spokesman Bill Burton compared Hillary to the Democrats’ favorite White House Villains, saying “Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have spent time in the White House and travelled to many countries as well, but along with Hillary Clinton they led us into the worst foreign policy disaster in a generation and are now giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran.”

UPDATE: Hillary got to take her shot at Obama’s foreign experience on camera at her second stop in Creston. Take a look.

She’s started being more aggressive against her rival Democrats, but Hillary Clinton takes a turn back toward the general election fight in a new campaign ad airing in New Hampshire. In the :30 spot, she goes after the Republican candidates who have already started attacking her — showing clips of anti-Clinton ads from John McCain and Mitt Romney with an announcer saying “Here they go again – the same old Republican attack machine is back.”

“Maybe it’s because they know that there’s one candidate with the strength and experience to get us out of Iraq, one candidate who will end tax giveaways for the big corporations, one candidate committed to cutting the huge Republican deficit and one candidate who will put government back to work for the middle class.”

Of course, the Machine itself disagrees with that line of reasoning. RNC Spokesman Danny Diaz says, “Senator Clinton has spent her entire career blaming her problems on her political opponents. The only things that are the ’same’ and ‘old’ are Hillary Clinton’s excuses.”

And Romney spokesman Kevin Madden says, “Governor Romney also has a record of, and reputation for, actually getting things done. Senator Clinton has a reputation for one thing: partisanship. Extreme partisanship.”