That’s not all Fischer and Mourdock have in common. Both of them, as it happens, were born in the same year. Harry Truman was president of the United States. Perry Como, Tony Bennett and Mario Lanza dominated the Hit Parade; "I Love Lucy" debuted on TV, if you had TV; and Joe DiMaggio was still playing for the Yankees. They were born in 1951. If they’re elected, they will be 61 years old when they take office.

Fischer and Mourdock were first eligible to vote for president in 1972. That year, while Richard Nixon was sweeping to a landslide victory, 29-year-old Joe Biden was winning a Senate seat in Delaware; he wouldn’t even be eligible for the office until his birthday on Nov. 20. He’s about nine years older than them, but by January he’ll have completed a four-year term as vice president … after his 36-year run in the world’s most exclusive – and rapidly aging – club.

And that, in a nutshell, is a sign of one way the United States Senate has changed over the last several decades.

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Sunday morning on "Meet the Press" Vice President Joe Biden went completely Joe Biden on the issue of marriage equality, telling David Gregory "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights," and crediting "Will and Grace." That's the Joe Biden we know and love.

Here's the exchange:

GREGORY: Have your views evolved?

BIDEN: The good news is that as more and more Americans come to understand what this is all about is a simple proposition. Who do you love? Who do you love and will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out what all marriages at their root are about. Whether they are marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals. [...]

GREGORY: You’re comfortable with same-sex marriage now?

BIDEN: Look, I am Vice President of the United States of America. The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that. [...] I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has done so far. People fear that is different and now they’re beginning to understand.

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The most important lesson of terrible premature presidential-campaign speculation is that nearly everyone who engages in it will be terribly, hilariously wrong. It doesn't matter if you're a complete buffoon, like Dick Morris, author of the 2007 classic "Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race," or someone fairly serious and "savvy," like New York Times politics reporter Matt Bai, who posited current nobody Mark Warner as the future of the party in a 2006 Times magazine cover story now best (if barely) remembered for its altered and unflattering photo of the subject.

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The former New York Times editor has lately been celebrating his return to writing by fearlessly tackling hacky column ideas already exhausted by everyone who was writing bad opinion columns during Keller's tenure as a person with an actually important job. Having offered his own takes on classics like "The Huffington Post isn't as good as a real newspaper" and "Twitter is dumb," Keller today tries the old "running mate switcharoo" scenario.

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But it's just not going to happen. Clinton says she doesn't want it, Biden says it's impossible, and it would damage more than help the president by making him look desperate.

The rumor hangs on little more than Bob Woodward's claim that it was "on the table" last fall, because the president had lost support among "the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the [2008] primaries." But Clinton's 2008 popularity with Latinos, to take one group, wouldn't translate into electoral enthusiasm; she can't pass the Dream Act by herself, any more than President Obama can. Changing vice presidents doesn't change the Congressional mess that impedes the president's agenda.

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The White House says the vice president is sending his first-ever tweet Monday, a Fourth of July message from himself and wife Jill Biden asking Americans to take time to think of the troops in battle.

The famously verbose and gaffe-prone Biden might seem an unlikely candidate to say it in 140 characters or less. But fear not -- like most politicians' Twitter accounts, Biden's will be staff-written.

It's part of the White House's growing focus on social media. The White House regularly communicates to supporters via Twitter, as does President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

On Wednesday the White House will even hold a Twitter town hall. Obama will take questions via Twitter, though he'll respond verbally.

Biden's Twitter username is (at)VP.

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Filmed inside the White House by a DNC team, the video prompted Real Clear Politics to ask whether the law prohibiting fundraising by federal employees in federal office buildings had been violated. A White House spokesperson responded to RCP that the video was filmed in the residential quarters of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which the Department of Justice distinguishes from the official rooms, and that Obama's predecessors had also filmed campaign ads in the White House:

President Bush And First Lady Laura Bush Filmed Parts Of Their Campaign Ads In The White House Residence -- The Bush Campaign pointed to 31 White House images used by the Clinton campaign In 1996 for precedent.

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Addressing Ohio Democrats, Biden said there had been great progress in talks with Republican lawmakers on a deficit-reduction plan agreement. But he insisted that his party wouldn't agree to cuts that would undermine the elderly and middle-class workers.

"We're not going to let the middle class carry the whole burden. We will sacrifice. But they must be in on the deal," Biden said in a speech at the Ohio Democratic Party's annual dinner.

Biden led efforts on a deficit-reduction plan but Republicans pulled out of the discussions last week, prompting President Barack Obama to take control of the talks.

The sides disagree over taxes. Democrats say a deficit-reduction agreement must include tax increases or eliminate tax breaks for big companies and wealthy individuals. Republicans want huge cuts in government spending and insist on no tax increases.

On tax breaks for the wealthy, Biden used the example of hedge fund managers who "play with other people's money."

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According to ProPublica:

Bin Laden "talks about targeting priorities," the counterterror official said. "He says the president is of course the top target if you could get a shot at him. Also the military chiefs like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the defense secretary, top military people. There is a note indicating that the vice president is not an important target because that position has less weight."

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Despite those stark comments, there's no evidence that President Obama has fundamentally changed the workings of the NRC -- which has for years been criticized as too close to industry. Earlier this year, for example, three states sued the NRC after it extended from 30 to 60 years the amount of time that nuclear waste can be stored on-site at power plants.

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Biden, speaking to some 400 soldiers in Baghdad, also said the U.S. would continue to train and equip Iraqi forces beyond 2011. His remarks highlighted continuing uncertainty about whether all American troops will head home by the end of the year as required by a security agreement between the two nations.

"The Iraqi people for the first time, I suspect, I would argue, in their history are on the verge of literally creating a country that will be democratic, sustainable and, God willing, prosperous," Biden told the troops at the military's headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad. "It could have a dramatic impact on this entire region, and God knows the Iraqi people deserve it."

The White House has promised to end the war responsibly. "By that we meant we were going to end this by bringing you all home within a time certain, but leaving behind a country that was worthy of all the sacrifices that so many of your brothers and sisters have made," Biden told the troops.

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After months of acrimony over corruption and intensified NATO military operations, Biden said the two countries are now on the same page. He also assured the mercurial Karzai that the United States was not in his country to "govern" and said Afghans are capable of building up their own institutions.

"It is not our intention to govern or to nation build," Biden said, adding that if "the Afghan people want it, we won't leave in 2014."

President Barack Obama has discussed maintaining a counterterrorism capability in Afghanistan after 2014 and the Afghan security force training program is expected to last until 2016. As recently as Dec. 16, Obama said the U.S. and its NATO allies would have an enduring presence there after 2014, although the details of that were unclear.

Biden's positive remarks seemed to be part of a broader effort to improve an often rocky relationship between the U.S. and Karzai. His visit, which began Monday, comes at the start of what has been described by NATO officials as a crucial year in the fight to break the Taliban.

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Changes in attitudes by military leaders, those in the service and the public allowed the repeal by Congress of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Biden noted in a nationally broadcast interview on Christmas eve.

"I think the country's evolving," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "And I think you're going to see, you know, the next effort is probably going to be to deal with so-called DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]. He said he agreed with Obama that his position in gay marriage is "evolving."

Gay marriage is legal in only a handful of states, mostly in the Northeast, and in Iowa. President Barack Obama recently said his feelings on the gay marriage issue were in a state of transition. But he also said he still believes in allowing strong civil unions that provide certain protections and legal rights that married couples have.

Obama said he is still wrestling with whether gay couples should have the right to marry, now that the change in the law will allow them to serve openly in combat.

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"We're starting this process, just like we did in Iraq. We're starting it in July of 2011, and we're going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014."

While that statement generated headlines over the weekend, it's simply not an accurate reflection of U.S. policy.

First of all, if Iraq is the model, then the transition to local security control (to use the official parlance) does not mean the total withdrawal of troops from the country. When President Obama declared an end to combat operations in Iraq in August, it was a manufactured, virtually meaningless milestone. There are still 50,000 American troops in that country.

So what about that 2014 date in Afghanistan? A spokesman for NATO explained last month that the date was not a deadline, but a goal. And even then, "it's not the end of the mission" but rather, "an inflection point where the balance of the mission would have shifted."

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Biden says he won't comment on that process, but has strong words about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (ah-SAHNJ').

Biden says if Assange conspired to get classified documents with a member of the U.S. military, then "that's fundamentally different" than if a reporter were given classified material by a source.

The vice president tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would argue it's closer to being "a high-tech terrorist" than what happened in the Pentagon Papers -- with the 1971 leak of a government study about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

An Army private is suspected of passing classified information to WikiLeaks.

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"Vice President Biden described the complex nature of the security problem in Afghanistan, commenting that besides the demography, geography and history of the region, we have a lot going for us."

That's from an account of a March 2009 meeting in Chile between Biden and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It also includes this devastating assessment of the capacity of the Karzai government by Biden:

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Biden is set to campaign Wednesday for Democrat Bryan Lentz in the home stretch of a close race for an open congressional seat.

Lentz, a state representative, is facing Republican Pat Meehan, a former U.S. attorney.

Lentz's campaign manager says he signed a deal Friday to hold the rally at Radnor High School, only to have the plan unravel. Campaign manager Kevin McTigue believes Republican school officials are to blame.

A call to the district's superintendent was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The event will instead be held at a township-owned gym.

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Now, first of all, "a lotta people" do not actually "think" that will happen. It's something pundits like Mark Halperin fantasize about. But wishful thinking is not the same as an actual reasonable prediction of future events.

So, King asks Bob Woodward, America's most famous journalist -- the man who speaks to everyone worth speaking to in the corridors of power, who just finished what he always refers to as "hundreds of hours" of interviews with everyone at the White House from the president on down -- did he hear anything about a shocking and unprecedented Clinton-Biden switch?

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