Hamlet Decides: Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will not run for president ends one of the highest-polling non-candidacies in American political history. It will undoubtedly be a relief to Hillary Clinton who watched as Biden rose to number three in the Democratic polls without entering the race.

Grief stricken over the death of his son Beau, Biden waited, and even if he may have wanted to enter, he waited too long. With President Obama at his side he said, “Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination,” Biden said. “But while I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent.”

While not mentioning Clinton by name, Biden made it known he disagrees with her about militant positions on the Middle East, and backing away from the policies and accomplishments of President Obama. “Democrats should not only defend this record and protect this record, they should run on the record,” he said.

Nation: Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify today before the House Benghazi committee, which itself is starting to bleed after some Republican members of the House said the committee was formed to politically skewer Clinton. The grilling could go on for hours.

Mr. Speaker: The majority of the 36 members of the House “Freedom Caucus,” the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, agreed to back Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan for Speaker of the House. The caucus did not actually endorse Ryan, leaving it to him to decide whether they’ve given him enough of a signal to risk taking the job. Current House Speaker John Boehner has scheduled the vote for next week.

Password Protected: Wikileaks says it has published some personal emails of CIA Director John Brennan, obtained by a 13-year-old who hacked into Brennan’s non-government account. A caller claiming to be the hacker told the New York Post he did it because he’s unhappy with US foreign policy.

One of the documents is Brennan’s national security application and another is a memo titled “The Conundrum of Iran.”

Baseball: The Mets have swept the Chicago Cubs in four games to win a bench in the World Series. They haven’t made it to the Series since 2000. The Toronto Blue Jays beat Kansas City 7-1, but that still leaves the Royals ahead 3-2 in the best of seven series.

The Obit Page: Cory Wells, a founding member of the trio Three Dog Night, whose hits in 60s and 70s, included “One,” “Easy to Be Hard” and “Joy to the World,” has died at age 74. The group had 21 consecutive Top 40 hits.

>Paul West, the ex-patriot British novelist who wrote with an arsenal of words and cranked out absurdist novels, has died at age 85 in Ithaca, NY. West was from the school of fiction in which rocket ships come out of the toilet bowl. The protagonist in one of his short stories was the 9,999,999,999th cell in Shakespeare’s brain. He had a small following.

>The raspy-voiced comedian Marty Ingels who starred with John Astin in the in the 1962-63 comedy series “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster,” has died in Los Angeles at age 79. He was married to Shirley Jones, who played the mother in “The Partridge Family.”

Getting Warmer: September was the hottest September on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, putting 2015 on track to be the hottest year on record. Previously 2014 was the hottest year. The warm weather is fed by this year’s El Niño in the Pacific, which feeds warm air into the atmosphere. But climate scientists say the underlying cause of this year’s high temperatures is greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.

Small Screen: The two guys who blew stuff up, built a cheese cannon, made an underwater blow dart, and tested the theory that you can fold a piece of paper only seven times, are packing it in when their 14^th season ends in 2016. That’s it for “Mythbusters.” It’s no myth that in television, when your ratings drop, it’s time to go.

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