A few endorsements this week from curious corners:

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project that helped bring attention to the disastrously simple-to-penetrate U.S.-Mexico border, endorsed Mike Huckabee -- a substantial endorsement for a man who was being assailed by top anti-illegal immigration activists just two weeks ago.

Gilchrist said Huckabee "actually wrote a plan that I can embrace" -- though the plan was actually "cribbed" from another leader in the anti-illegal immigration movement, Mark Krikorian -- and that was enough to win his support.

Fred Thompson won the support of Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committeeman from Virginia, who has battled in the trenches of the conservative movement for years.

"Senator Thompson has the most conservative instincts on the public policy issues that are important to America," Blackwell said.

And Mitt Romney may have won the most important endorsement of all, from National Review, which said since Thompson hasn't convinced voters he even wants to be president, Romney is the best option left -- and a decent choice at that:

"Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization -- none of the major candidates has -- he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction."

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times