Ryan

Without the advantage (or contamination) of listening to other instant analysts, I gave the debate to Vice President Joe Biden on style and on the substance of economic and tax policy. Rehearsed or not, his exasperation with Rep. Paul Ryan's posturing was engaging, not overbearing, and he checked the "47%" and "don't voucherize Medicare" boxes. With some aid from the moderator, he pounced on Ryan for teasing the voters about which tax breaks Mitt Romney would eliminate to offset his tax cuts.

CVS Caremark Corp. shares plunged 20% after the company said its unit for managing pharmacy benefits lost $3.7 billion in contracts and disclosed that antitrust regulators were probing some business practices. The division, which negotiates drug prices with manufacturers for corporate and government customers, lost more business than anticipated, CVS Chief Executive Tom Ryan said. The Woonsocket, R.I., company predicts that margins and operating profit at the pharmacy-benefits management unit will shrink by 10% to 12% in 2010.

Getting to the game Re "Drive to the new stadium? Developer hopes you won't," April 6 Memo to Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which wants to build a football stadium in downtown L.A.: Your expectation that many ticket holders will travel via rail to games needs a dose of reality. Last month I took a group of 25 on Metro's Blue Line from Long Beach to AEG's Staples Center for a midweek Clippers game. Many were first-time riders who were thrilled to experience our light rail system.

Ryan Miller watched the Turin Olympic hockey tournament from his couch with his family in East Lansing, Mich., when he paid attention at all. "I just wanted to take a mental break from hockey," he said, and who could blame him? Miller might have been the best American goaltender in the NHL during the 2005-06 season, but he had suffered an early-season thumb injury and didn't return to the Buffalo Sabres' lineup until the day Team USA was announced. That was too late for team officials to feel comfortable including him on the roster.

WASHINGTON -- Federal banking regulators have ordered Capital One Bank to refund $150 million to about 2 million customers for deceptive marketing of payment protection and other add-on products sold with its credit cards. Capital One also must pay $60 million in civil penalties for the practices. The refunds and fines, which the bank has agreed to pay under consent orders, were announced Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

WASHINGTON - The federal deficit is shrinking more quickly than expected, and the government's long-term debt has largely stabilized for the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday in a report that could strengthen the Obama administration's hand in the budget battles with congressional Republicans. The budget office continues to say the federal government faces a long-range budget problem - mostly caused by the costs of an aging population - but its new forecast pushes the crunch point for that problem off into a considerably more distant future: well after the 2020 presidential election.

WASHINGTON - The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for the agency's "foolish mistakes" in singling out conservative groups for intrusive and time-consuming scrutiny, but said that the effort was not driven by partisan motives. Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, whose tenure will end Wednesday after he resigned under pressure this week, said the agency staff's attempts to identify groups with political aims was not "targeting," as it was termed in an inspector general's audit.

Cyberspace was a-twitter this week with the news that Ryan Seacrest is buying Ellen DeGeneres' Beverly Hills compound for $37 million, and that she and spouse Portia de Rossi are moving no farther than a Hal Levitt-designed midcentury — also in Beverly Hills. DeGeneres' new 8,500-square-foot house, built in 1958, features walls of glass, soaring ceilings, multiple fireplaces, a library, a black-and-stainless-steel kitchen, a sunken living room, four bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Josh Hamilton said he was assured by doctors this week that the allergies that lead to occasional sinus and throat discomfort and dizziness were not caused or exacerbated by his heavy cocaine use from 2002-2005. "You have a hallway up the middle of your nose and sinus cavities on each side," said Hamilton, whose addiction to drugs and alcohol led to a ban from baseball from 2003-2005. "When you breathe air, it goes up and down the hallway. "Same thing when you do drugs, it goes up the hallway, not into the sinus cavities.

Any correspondence about possible Clippers' off-season moves needs to go straight to the top. So, Chris Paul, here's a primer on what you should instruct your franchise to do in the coming months to take that next step, otherwise known as getting past the first round of the playoffs. It's not going to be easy, the Clippers creeping toward taxpayer status for the first time in franchise history, assuming you come back. You're going to have to help persuade Donald Sterling to pay those more punitive taxes or risk multiplying the disappointment Clipper Nation experienced in recent weeks.