I love comparative stories about candidates that aren't all about policy. Which is odd, I suppose, since I'm such a policy hound. But I love it when a magazine or newspaper sticks a reporter in a room with experts about something — vocabulary, music, culture — and has those experts analyze all of the candidates on a side in turn. It happens every cycle and I never get tired of it.

Newt Gingrich is taking an awfully cavalier attitude towards running for President, and he's being rewarded for it by the media. Rather than, say, campaigning for it and actually picking up the phone and asking for some money, Gingrich is just going to turn it over to an assistant and see what shakes. And I'm not kidding — this is what American politics has been reduced to.

You have probably heard that the Governor's mansion is undergoing some renovations and that Texas' first family will be elsewhere during the work. You may not have known that Perry's temporary housing will cost taxpayers some $10,000 a month. Small government, indeed!