WASHINGTON -- By now most sentient Americans have heard about the war on women. That is, the so-called Republican war on women, which has been framed as a battle waged by stodgy old white guys who want to deny women reproductive freedom.

WASHINGTON -- Forty years ago, all of America learned the name of a particular condominium, hotel and office complex along the Potomac in the nation's capital.

WASHINGTON -- Among the lessons of this presidential election season, perhaps most salient is that the so-called Ordinary American is dead.

WASHINGTON -- For the past year, we've been relentlessly reminded that Republicans didn't especially love their front-running presidential candidate.

WASHINGTON -- Novelist John Grisham could hardly spin a more provocative fiction: The president and his surrogates mount an aggressive campaign to intimidate the chief justice of the United States, implying ruin and ridicule should he fail to vote in a pivotal case according to the ruling political party's wishes.

WASHINGTON -- A presidential race recently focused on high school has come to resemble a popularity contest of the same vintage.

WASHINGTON -- Close your eyes and picture 110 million obese people waddling around America's sidewalks. You'll probably want to keep your eyes closed.

WASHINGTON -- The squabbling between political campaigns and the harrumphing of pundits were put in proper perspective at, of all places, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) dinner -- the annual Prom on the Potomac where 2,000 or so media members and movie stars gather to honor the president and admire one another.

WASHINGTON -- It was fun. It was odd. It was just a little bit ... unseemly.

WASHINGTON -- Either President Obama has wings of Kevlar -- or he has the most incompetent scheduling staff in White House history.