Wolf Blitzer

Is it too late to fire the moderator? Two more Republican candidates -- Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry -- said thanks but no thanks to an invitation to participate in an Iowa debate managed by real estate mogul Donald Trump. The Dec. 27 affair has now just two committed participants, one at the top of the GOP field and one distant aspirant, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, respectively. Perry's campaign said he plans to focus his efforts on traditional retail campaigning in the closing weeks.

Dick Cheney declined during appearances on Sunday talk shows to say if he had completed the questionnaire given to other potential running mates for George W. Bush. Cheney, whose vice presidential candidacy has been marked by questions about his retirement package, his conservative voting record in Congress and his infrequent trips to polls in Texas, had been in charge of the vetting process for the ticket's No. 2 slot until being tapped in late July by Bush.

The team for CNN's new morning show is in place. Now it just needs a name and a time and a launch date. As expected, former ABC News correspondent Chris Cuomo is to host. The surprise is who is joining him. His co-host is to be Kate Bolduan, a CNN congressional correspondent and a co-anchor of "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. " There had been speculation about Erin Burnett moving from evenings to mornings, but that switch proved to be hard sell with her. Joining the new show as its news anchor is Michaela Pereira, who is known to Los Angeles viewers from her hosting duties on KTLA's morning show.

SACRAMENTO - It was the compliment that spawned a million tweets. And before long, President Obama was apologizing for it. On Thursday, Obama said California's Kamala Harris was the "best-looking attorney general," and commentators raced for their keyboards and smartphones to denounce the remark as sexist or defend it as benign. The next day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the president had called Harris to apologize for the remark and the distraction it caused. The comment, made during a Bay Area fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, had become grist for the nonstop, politically charged news cycle.

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who raised scads of money for the New York senator's failed presidential campaign. She and her husband, Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England, split their time between New York and a British country estate. It's not a bad life, she says, and she'd like you to have one just like it. Which is why she's backing Sen. John McCain for president, not her party's nominee.

It gets to you after a while, all this wild guessing on TV about President Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and Kenneth Starr, a case of conjecture based on speculation evolving into common wisdom through repeated exposure. But still, I find myself falling into the same trap. "I wonder who Larry King has on CNN tonight," I said to my wife Tuesday morning. "I'm betting Wolf Blitzer," she said. "Fifty-fifty it's Oliver North," I said. "If Larry does have on Oliver North, what do you think he'll say?"

For its final and by definition historic night the Democrats moved their convention to Denver's Invesco Field -- a move meant to express the party's oneness with the people, but a choice not without pitfalls. There was the danger of seeming too pretentious on the one hand, too rock 'n' roll on the other, but also of diffusing the ricocheting energy one can generate in a contained meeting hall in a huge open space built for sports. And it invited ridicule from an opposition that earlier mocked Barack Obama's Berlin love parade, that cast him as a celebrity without substance.

Sen. John F. Kerry said Sunday that he did not envision sending more troops to Iraq if he wins the presidency and would view his first term as "unsuccessful" if he failed to bring a significant number of them home. In a round of network television interviews, the Democratic presidential nominee declined to lay out details of how he would eventually extract 140,000 U.S.

SATURDAY Good Morning America (N) 7 a.m. KABC The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer The economy: economist Mark Zandi. 3 p.m. CNN McLaughlin Group 6:30 p.m. KCET SUNDAY Today Political analyst Mark Halperin; missing 7-year-old; Labor Day barbecue. (N) 5 a.m. KNBC CBS News Sunday Morning The Army's first blind active-duty officer; automaker BMW's aging workforce. (N) 6 a.m. KCBS Today Jobs; facts about weight; cleaning cars, electronics and purses; brownie taste test.