Having just gotten back from a trip abroad where the news was dominated by the story of a politician facing severe consequences for his sexual misconduct, I opened up the pages of the American news to find... well, pretty much the same thing.

Because this will be Mitt Romney's first debate appearance, political observers are going to be closely watching how intensely the others attack him and his positions, and how Romney responds to such attacks.

Obama, from many accounts, will be using a tactic in his primetime speech that I would call "muddying the waters." The president is going to have a more complicated withdrawal schedule than one might have expected.

John Huntsman... whoops, took that from their own campaign materials, sorry... let's start over... Jon Huntsman announced he was running for president, to a giant collective yawn outside the Beltway.

The problem for Palin is that both she and Bachmann are favorites of an almost-identical slice of the Republican electorate. Which creates somewhat of a zero-sum game between the two: as one gains support, the other is bound to lose support.

Without getting too far into the weeds of the California budget process, here's what just happened.