WASHINGTON -- In life, context is everything; in Washington, leverage is everything else.

Both are essential to understanding what just happened.

WASHINGTON -- Ask most people on Capitol Hill and they'll say: 50-50. Those are the odds they give for a government shutdown.

WASHINGTON -- About 30 years ago as a young reporter in Florida, I was assigned a series on gun control in response to gun violence, which had peaked in the U.S. in 1980.

WASHINGTON -- As I read Vlad's op-ed in The New York Times, a Judy Collins tune kept replaying in my head: "Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer?"

WASHINGTON -- Rarely, if ever, has so much talk preceded a proposed military strike.

Most administrations contemplating military action worry about an exit strategy. The Obama administration seems to be in search of an entrance strategy.

WASHINGTON -- Waging a little bit of war is like being a little bit pregnant.

WASHINGTON -- Children, children.

Here we are in the midst of a bloody clash in Egypt, more than 100,000 slaughtered in Syria, another looming debt crisis at home, and we're consumed with angst over a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask and invited the crowd to cheer for the bulls.

WASHINGTON -- Three years out and you'd think the deed was done: Madame President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.She's everywhere these days because: (a) It's August; (b) Reporters are bored with President Obama; (c) Reporters are bored with Joe Biden; (d) Clintons are never boring.

WASHINGTON -- It is easy to understand how everyone in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case feels.If I were Martin's mother, I'd want his killer's heart on a platter. If I were Zimmerman's mother, I'd be grateful my son escaped greater injury, however he managed. If I were African-American, I would fear for my sons and be furious at a system that condones vigilantism, and then acts as though naming a teen's death a "tragedy" ends the discussion.

WASHINGTON -- As a courtroom junkie since my early reporting days, it is at great personal sacrifice that I suggest the following: It may be time to get television cameras out of the courtroom.