With Mitt and Muslims, it's a pretty extraordinary statement that a presidential candidate would, on principle, rule out members of an entire religion for high office in his administration. And it's not an entirely theoretical question. Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American and Muslim, has been a senior member of President Bush's foreign policy team from the start. He has been successively, US Ambassador to Afghanistan (2003-05), US Ambassador to Iraq (2005-07) and now US Ambassador to the United Nations (2007-).

He's often discussed as a potential Secretary of State should a Republican win the presidency in 2008.

So again, this isn't as hypothetical a question as you might think.

For all that, though, I think Romney's bigger problem is that he seems to be lying. Yesterday he denied unequivocally that he said he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet in his conversation with Mansour Ijaz. Ijaz is sticking by his story. And now three Republicans are on the record saying that Romney said the same thing back in September. And there's now an additional, contemporaneous account adding further weight to their claims.

Romney didn't specifically reference that earlier conversation, but presumably he's not just saying that he didn't say this to Ijaz but that he didn't say it ever.

We'll check to see whether he addresses this again today.