That's probably why the Air Force, the entity most favored by our flyboy Presidents and president-wanna-be McCain, has committed itself to a fleet of stealth fighters and bombers, despite the fact that they're hard to land and don't do well when there's salt in the air. But, that's not my topic today. Rather, alerted by Laura Clawson to the fact that Huckabee had set up a new PAC in support of Republican long-shots, I was prompted to take a look at what else the fellow, who supposedly gave up on his quest for the Republican presidential nomination in early March, has been up to.

Mike Huckabee, the former Governor of Arkansas has been a busy fellow. In addition to clearing up a little controversy over the list of donors to his official portrait, he's withdrawn from the running of the Boston Marathon because of a bum knee.

This week, after a week of running around California and New York state, giving speeches in New Rochell, Ithaca, Albany and Schenectady and announcing upcoming visits to Washington state and Montana, started with a presentation on the 13th at the Congregation Zichron Kedoshim in Quebec:

Don't give up land: Huckabee

By Joel Goldenberg, The Suburban

Israel should not give up an inch of land in the name of peace with its neighbours, says Mike Huckabee, a former candidate for the U.S. Republican nomination.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor well known for his folksy speaking style, spoke Sunday night at Congregation Zichron Kedoshim, at the Third Annual Evelyn and Samuel Margolick Memorial Lecture. Guest speakers in the previous years included former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer and U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman.

Huckabee, who has visited Israel numerous times, was asked by an audience member how he would tackle the Mideast peace issue if he became president.

“My solution is to make sure you don’t force Israel to give up land in order to appease Palestinians,” he said to loud applause from the sold out audience. “The most foolish thing we could do is to ask Israel, which has a very tiny piece of real estate to begin with, to give pieces of that property to those who surround it, who have vowed to destroy the very nation of Israel.

Huckabee said anyone who has ever visited disputed areas like the Golan Heights knows “there is no such thing as giving up territory without giving up extraordinary levels of security.” On the other hand, he said, the Arab countries take up hundreds of thousands of square miles of land.

And then, on the 15th, Huckabee announced his Political Action Committee to help down-and-wanting-up candidates, which the Creative Artists Agencies might well have helped him set up. That he seems to have made his peace with the Club for Growth caused some surprise to some pundits, but I always considered the Club's supposed opposition to the "tax and spender" to be a bogus ploy which got him a lot of attention in Iowa and propelled him to the second slot. After all, the major funder of the Club for Growth is part of the same clan that was funding Huckabee's presidential campaign.

Although there's some mention in the press releases of Mike Huckabee promoting John McCain, considering that he's covering the same issues in his speeches that he raised during his campaign, it's likely that he's just keeping his oar in so the "youngest" in the Republican field won't be forgotten by the time of the Republican Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesotta from September 1-4, four days after the Democratic National Convention in Denver ends.

Considering McCain's age and questionable health, it looks to me more like Huckabee's a stealth candidate waiting in the wings.