In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info ||||| Potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has more to say about Natalie Portman and the president’s roots in Kenya. For better or worse. Clearly bitten by criticism of comments he made on those topics (including his discussion of Barack Obama’s boyhood: “Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas”), Huckabee tells Sirius Radio’s POTUS channel much of the criticism has been overblown. 
 
 
 
 On the reaction to his comments on Kenya, Huckabee says they “ranged from–this guy is so dumb he doesn’t know that Barack Obama grew up in Indonesia not Kenya–all the way to the other extreme…well, I can’t be both. I can’t be the dumbest guy in the room and the smartest guy in the room at the same time.” 
 
 But some of Huckabee’s recent comments have left analysts like Aol’s Jill Lawrence concluding that “the further Huckabee goes down the road he’s on, the less seriously he’s taken as a presidential aspirant.” 
 
 As for comments on Natalie Portman interpreted by many to be a criticism of the Academy Award winner as an “unwed mother,” Huckabee insists that was not his intention: 
 
 I didn’t bring Natalie Portman up at all. She’s a great actress. I’ve said many times, she deserves her Oscar. He brought up Natalie Portman. He brought up her acceptance at the Oscars speech. In the context of the first chapter of my book, and that’s how he kind of got into it, because I talk about the importance of the family as being the most fundamental unit of government. So in the course of that, he asked me about her acceptance speech. I used that as a segue, not to talk about Natalie Portman, but to talk about the economic realities of unwed mothers. 
 
 Listen to it here, from SIrius XM Radio’s POTUS:
– Mike Huckabee has more to say on both of his recent headline-making statements: That Barack Obama grew up in Kenya, and that Natalie Portman is setting a bad example with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mediaite reports Huckabee’s comments from Sirius Radio’s POTUS channel: On Kenya: “The reaction ranged from, ‘This guy is so dumb he doesn’t know that Barack Obama grew up in Indonesia not Kenya,’ all the way to the other extreme, I saw people like Andrea Mitchell saying, ‘Oh no, he did this on purpose, he is very smart and shrewd, he did this in a calculating way.' Well, I can’t be both. I can’t be the dumbest guy in the room and the smartest guy in the room at the same time. I have to be one or the other, or maybe it was just that I made a mistake, I corrected it.” On Portman: “I didn’t bring Natalie Portman up at all. She’s a great actress. I’ve said many times, she deserves her Oscar. He [radio host Michael Medved] brought up Natalie Portman. He brought up her acceptance at the Oscars speech, in the context of the first chapter of my book, and that’s how he kind of got into it, because I talk about the importance of the family as being the most fundamental unit of government. So in the course of that, he asked me about her acceptance speech. I used that as a segue, not to talk about Natalie Portman, but to talk about the economic realities of unwed mothers.” Click for one analyst’s assessment that both of these comments will result in Huckabee being taken “less seriously” as a presidential candidate.