Spent nine hours at Poppy International Airport in Houston Saturday, but finally got home Sunday morning in plenty of time for church and a pretty impressive performance by the waves of Monterey Bay.

Here are some midday news/views snacks for your Monday consumption:

* Feds investigating Christie for alleged improper use of Sandy relief funds to promote New Jersey and his own self.

* Should be news to absolutely no one, but Pope Francis calls abortion “horrific.”

* Interesting piece from Dallas Morning News on how Ted Cruz uses the compliment “utterly fearless” so often for fellow conservatives that it can’t serve as implied candidate endorsement.

* Influential House veteran George Miller (D-CA) to retire after 40 years in House.

* Politico‘s David Rogers details additional deals cut to implement December budget deal.

And in non-political news:

* Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston finally breaks Golden Globe drought, but Aaron Paul loses to Jon Voight’s convincincly evil performance in Ray Donovan.

As we break for lunch, here are The Runaways performing “California Paradise” in Japan in 1977.

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Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.