Fox News’ Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and a darling of the Israeli right-wing and Christian evangelists, announced he is leaving the network and keeping options open for a run as the GOP presidential nominee.

“As much as I have loved doing the show, I cannot bring myself to rule out another Presidential run,” he said.

“This is the last edition of ‘Huckabee’ on the Fox News Channel. It’s been the ride of a lifetime, and I have never had so much fun in my life. But I also realize that God hasn’t put me on earth just to have a good time or to make a good living, but rather has put me on earth to try to make a good life.

“There has been a great deal of speculation as to whether I would run for President. If I were willing to absolutely rule that out, I could keep doing this show. But I can’t make such a declaration. I won’t make a decision about running until late in the spring of 2015, but the continued chatter has put Fox News into a position that is not fair to them nor is it possible for me to openly determine political and financial support to justify a race. The honorable thing to do at this point is to end my tenure here at Fox.”

Several pro-Israel Christians are running or thinking of running for the Republican party nomination. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was in Israel last week to show his face in headlines back home.

Retired neuro-surgeon Ben Carson made his first trip to Israel three weeks ago.

And don’t count out Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann and Alaska’s Sarah Palin, both of whom are very attractive women with attractive pro-Israel views though not everyone’s cup of tea.

But the biggie is Sen. Ted Cruz, and Huckabee could make trouble for him, and probably for the Republican party, if he runs.

In an election that spells the end of the Democrat’s vise over the U.S. Senate, U.S. President Obama now looks ahead to a long 27-months of lame-duckship.

Obama and the Democrats have had their talking points headed with “blame Republicans for Washington gridlock,” but the U.S. administration and its cheering squad in congress will now own the gridlock title, as columnist Jonathan Tobin at Commentary rightly predicted going into yesterday’s election.

The Republicans have taken control of the U.S. Senate, gaining 7 seats from the Democrats, and retained control of the House, achieving a net gain of 10 seats.The Republicans have 235 of the 435 House seats, so they are ahead by a comfortable margin.

Political commentator Charles Krauthammer objected to the use of the term “wave” to describe the routing of Democrats in yesterday’s election. He diagnosed it instead as a “tsunami.”

The growth of House control by the Republicans spells changes in chairmanships of important committees. One to watch will be the Ways and Means Committee,which will be headed by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. This committee is about to rewrite the tax code, and given the IRS scandals and numerous investigations which critics have claimed were stymied by the Democrats’ control, this should be interesting to watch.

Similarly, the control by the GOP of the Senate will have a significant impact on committee chairmanships in that chamber. Insiders are expecting Sen. John McCain to assume leadership over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Watch that space! McCain has been deriding this administration’s bungling of foreign policy all over the globe.

Another big change is that Harry Reid will no longer be the powerful Senate majority leader. That plum is expected to go to Sen. Mitch McConnell, although Ted Cruz (R-TX) very publicly refused to commit to backing the Kentucky Republican in what looks to be a secondary backstage battle to watch next week.

A breakdown of significant changes and what they mean for those who care about U.S.-Israel relations to follow.

Legislation recently introduced into the U.S. congress which would strip U.S. citizenship from Americans who went abroad and joined ISIS in order to engage in jihad came before the full senate for a vote on Thursday, Sept. 18.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the sponsor of the bipartisan bill, reminded members of the senate that estimates of the numbers of Americans currently in Syria or Iraq fighting for ISIS “range from ‘about a dozen’ according to one Pentagon spokesman, to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s reassertion of about a hundred Americans fights with ISIS in this week’s Armed Services Committee hearing.”

Cruz asked the full senate for unanimous consent to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act or ETA of 2014.

But Democrat Mazie Hirono, senator from Hawaii, rose to vote against passing the ETA. The reason Hirono gave is that the bill had not been vetted by the Judiciary Committee, and given that ETA deals with the important issue of stripping U.S. citizenship from Americans, it was premature to approve the proposed Act.

Cruz made two points in response, one temporal and one substantive. First, the senate was about to go into recess so that members could go back to their states for the campaign season. This means that the legislation will not be approved, if at all, for many months.

The second point Cruz made is that while the idea of stripping U.S. citizenship is a serious constitutional matter, it is one which has long been deemed constitutional and applied against American citizens who choose to fight for an enemy country against the United States. What the ETA does is simply extend what has long been a weapon in the arsenal for protecting American citizens from violent traitors. It extends the mechanism to also apply to those who are fighting with non-state enemies, such as ISIS.

UPDATE: A GRAINY BUT AUDIBLE VIDEO CAPTURING THE MOMENT CRUZ RESPONDED TO THE ANTI-ISRAEL JEERS, AND AS HE WALKS OUT WITH DIGNITY,  HAS BEEN ADDED AT THE END OF THIS ARTICLE.

About that Christian event U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) attended last night, Sept. 10? Some have characterized what happened as Cruz having been booed off the stage.

Au contraire.

What happened is that Cruz walked out on the crowd, some of whom booed his stalwart support for Israel. It wasn’t a large percentage of the audience, but it was a relentless group.

“I told them that if you will not stand with Israel, if you will not stand with the Jews, then I will not stand with you. And then I walked off the stage.”

Here is what the senator sent out last night, describing what happened at the “In Defense of Christians” event:

Tonight in Washington should have been a night of unity as we came together for the inaugural event for a group that calls itself ‘In Defense of Christians.’ Instead, it unfortunately deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred.

When I spoke in strong support of Israel and the Jewish people, who are being persecuted and murdered by the same vicious terrorists who are also slaughtering Christians, many Christians in the audience applauded. But, sadly, a vocal and angry minority of attendees at the conference tried to shout down my expression of solidarity with Israel.

They cannot shout down the truth. And we should not shy away from expressing the truth, even in the face of – especially in the face of – ignorance and bigotry.

I told the attendees that those who hate Israel also hate America, that those who hate Jews also hate Christians, and that anyone who hates Israel and the Jewish people is not following the teachings of Christ.

These statements were met with angry boos. I went on to tell the crowd that Christians in the Middle East have no better friend than Israel. That Christians can practice their faith free of persecution in Israel. And that ISIS, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, along with their state sponsors in Syria and Iran, are all part of the same cancer, murdering Christians and Jews alike. Hate is hate, and murder is murder.

I came to this event tonight to help shine a light on the tragic persecution and slaughter of Christians by ISIS and Islamic radicals throughout the Middle East. American leaders have been far too silent as to this horrific evil.

But bigotry and hatred have no place in this discussion. Anti-Semitism is a corrosive evil, and it reared its ugly head tonight.

After just a few minutes, I had no choice. I told them that if you will not stand with Israel, if you will not stand with the Jews, then I will not stand with you. And then I walked off the stage.

Will the words he spoke, and the action he took, endear Senator Cruz to the sneering, jeering, (largely Jewish) intellectual elite?  Doubtful. And sad.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R. Tex) spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, June 26. He spoke about the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach, and their abductors.

Cruz spoke in detail about each one of the boys, about the circumstances of the kidnapping and about the nature of Hamas, which Israel has named as the entity responsible for the kidnapping.

The name Gil-ad means “everlasting happiness,” Cruz explained. He talked about the hobbies and natures of each of the boys, providing details unseen in most news reports to date.

Cruz lashed out at the world’s media for not having the story on the front page as an entire nation is in agony over the innocent kidnapped school boys.

And the U.S. senator insisted that the Palestinian Authority should not get another U.S. taxpayer’s dollar so long as the genocidal Hamas is part of the government. Sen. Cruz said

Israel’s Shin Bet identified two key suspects in the abduction. These two individuals are members of Hamas, a vicious terrorist organization that seeks Israel’s destruction and has launched thousands of rockets into Israel, killing innocent civilians. Those rockets have also killed dozens of Americans in Israel. Now they have kidnapped three schoolboys.  Sadly, this is business as usual for Hamas. This is the same terrorist organization with which the Palestinian Authority recently joined in a so-called ‘unity’ government.

In addition to insisting that the U.S. refuse to provide additional funds to the PA, Cruz also said that the U.S. should be assisting Israel in every way possible until the boys are brought home.

Hamas, give the boys back. Hamas, give those boys back now. The full weight of the world should bear down on Hamas to give them back safely and immediately. If they do not, we should use all of the available means to stand unequivocally with Israel for however long it takes to find these boys and to bring them home. These are teenagers who were targeted for who they are, who have done no wrong, who have done nothing that comes near to deserving what has happened to them that day while waiting at the bus stop to go home from school.

Whether anyone else in Washington was listening, or cares, remains to be seen.

When Sen. Cruz introduced S. 2195 on April 1, he found an initiative which brought his fellow senators together in a full-throated declaration of patriotism from  across the political spectrum.

“It is unconscionable that, in the name of international diplomatic protocol, the United States would be forced to host a foreign national who showed a brutal disregard for the status of our diplomats when they were stationed in his country,” Cruz said at that time.

The bill introduced by Cruz in the Senate, and by Doug Lamborn (R-CO5) in the House, prevents terrorists from entering the United States as United Nations ambassadors. It was introduced because Iranian President Hasan Rouhani named Hamid Aboutalebi as Iran’s new ambassador to the U.N.

Aboutalebi was actively involved in the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He and his comrades held hostage 52 Americans for 444 days, in one of the most painful ongoing national experiences Americans have had to endure in recent memory.

“This nomination is part of Iran’s clear and consistent pattern of virulent anti-Americanism that has defined their foreign policy since 1979,” Sen. Cruz said. “We need to send Tehran an equally clear message: The United States Senate is not going to just ignore this most recent insult, but is going to give our President the authority to affirmatively reject it.

Today, Monday, April 7, Cruz requested and received unanimous consent to pass that bill.

“I am proud to join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this national security issue that transcends political parties,” said Sen. Cruz.

Cruz thanked several Senate colleagues who were instrumental in passage of this legislation, including Sen. Dan Coats (R-Indiana), a cosponsor of the bill, and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona), Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey).

Cong. Lamborn who introduced the companion legislation in the House, H.R. 4357, plans to call for a vote in that chamber before the Easter recess.

On Tuesday, April 1, Colorado congressman Doug Lamborn (R) introduced H.R. 4357 into the U.S. Congress. This proposed legislation is intended to prevent known terrorists from obtaining visas to enter the United States as ambassadors to the United Nations.

Yes, it is absurd that legislation needs to be passed to prevent such a farce. But unless this legislation is passed, the U.S. will allow one of the Iranians who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and held 52 of our citizens captive for 444 days, to enter the U.S. and to travel to the U.N. in New York.

That is because the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hasan Rouhani, named Hamid Aboutalebi as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Aboutalebi is a member of the militant group The Muslim Students Followers of the Imam’s Line, which took the Americans hostage in Tehran.

On November 4, 1979, the Islamic revolutionaries scaled the walls of the American Embassy and occupied it to show their support for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and to express outrage that the deposed Shah of Iran had been admitted into the U.S. for cancer treatment. The revolutionaries wanted the Shah returned to Iran for a trial and, presumably, execution.

“America should not willingly accept into our country a diplomat who helped hold American diplomats hostage. Diplomatic immunity should not apply to terrorists. The only way terrorists should be allowed into our country is if they are coming to face justice. The President can already deny visas to diplomats for spying. Terrorist activities by diplomats, past or present, should be dealt with just as severely,” said Lamborn in a statement released on April 2.

Aboutalebi is now downplaying his role in the group, claiming that he was “merely” a translator and negotiator during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, referred to in Iran as “Conquest of the American Spy Den.”

Lamborn’s proposed bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK1), is a companion bill to the senate version introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), S. 2195.

The bills which seek to prevent known terrorists from obtaining visas in order to enter the U.S., were sent to the Judiciary Committees of their respective houses.

Only 11 percent of all bills introduced make it out of committee, and only approximately three percent of all bills were enacted during 2011 – 2013, so expectations are not high that these bills will pass.