Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI landed in Maryland. This is a big deal for everyone — although it might turn out to be an inconvenience for Gordon Brown.

The Associated Press just wants to get it out there that John McCain is really, really conservative. In case anyone forgot. And some of you may have, since he is sometimes portrayed as being something other than really, really conservative.

This weekend mounted one very important question: why would McCain raise money for Giuliani?

Well, this is odd.

In an April 3 memo obtained by Washington Wire, [McCain] campaign manager Rick Davis asked donors — in the spirit of party unity — to help with “a special request”: paying off the campaign debt accrued by Giuliani in the Republican presidential primary.

In Case you missed and are interested in that sort of thing, President Bush's tax returns came out last week, as did Cheneys. Dick Cheney pulls in a pretty decent yearly nut. I'm curious if another Vice President has so far outstripped his President in earnings.

Planes kept having problems, the GOP's interior war was illustrated in detail, and Colin Powell came out against Bush's tendency to punt on decisions concerning Iraq in these last late days of his administration.

Yesterday's big story was the testimony before Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Iraq, at least until late last night when the runoff for the Democratic candidate for railroad commissioner was decided.

The Lone Star Project is calling on Fort Worth State Senator Kim Brimer to fork over $357,000 to charity after the sale of a condo owned by his wife that Senator Brimer rented with campaign funds. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Jay Root does some due diligence and not only delivers fine reporting, but totally destroys the protestations of Brimer's spokesperson.

I'm a fan of the Washington Post, and their work over the last year has been recognized with 6 Pulitzer Prizes. I was particularly glad to see the excellent reporting by Dana Priest and Anne Hull on the Walter Reed scandal, and the work of Barton Gellman and Jo Becker for their series on the Cheney Vice Presidency on the winner's list. If you haven't read those, the fact that they are examples of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting should be enough of a reason to go check them out.

News items rarely split the weekend into distinct categories of A) unbelievable and B) unsurprising, but that's what happened from Friday to Sunday.