The Gavel Drops: House Speaker John Boehner said he woke up yesterday morning, prayed, and decided to resign from Congress. His announcement that he will leave Oct. 30^th shocked Washington and opened the door for the Republican far right to seize more power.

His announcement came the day after Boehner fulfilled his 20-year dream of hosting a Pope in Congress.

Some of the most right wing Republican presidential candidates took no time to stomp on Boehner’s political dead body. At the Value Voters Summit, the crowd cheered when Florida’s Marco Rubio announced the news. He said, “The time has come to turn the page for a new generation of leadership, and that extends to the White House.”

President Obama called Boehner “a patriot” and the NY Times’ Gail Collins wrote, “There’s nothing like an imminent departure to make a politician popular.”

Boehner said he is resigning to avoid another bloody fight over his leadership and a possible government shutdown tripped by a standoff over funding for Planned Parenthood. Staying until October will allow him to hold off the Republican Party’s right wing one last time and cooperate with the Democrats to keep the government running. President Obama has vowed to veto any bill that takes money away from Planned Parenthood.

Vladimir: Russian President Vladimir Putin tells Charlie Rose in a “60 Minutes” interview to air tomorrow that he’s building up military forces in Syria to save the regime of Bashar al Assad. “There is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism,” Putin says. He says that allowing the government to be destroyed would lead to the same chaos that reigns in Libya and Iraq.

Hacking: President Obama announced yesterday that he’s reached an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to curb Chinese computer hacking and economic espionage, but he also threatened to slap sanctions on the hackers. “It has to stop,” Obama told reporters. Xi denied that his government has had anything to do with the hacking, even though the US has traced some of it back to the Peoples Liberation Army.

Penalty Kick: The Swiss government is investigating Sepp Blatter, president of the worldwide soccer body FIFA, for “suspicion of criminal mismanagement and suspicion of misappropriation” of funds, the Swiss attorney general announced. Basically, massive corruption.

Blatter is suspected of giving a sweetheart television deal to a former FIFA executive for $19 million less than its real market value.

He’s also under investigation in the US, which indicted 14 top soccer officials last spring. In June Blatter announced he would resign from the office he’s held since 1998 to be replaced in a special election scheduled for February. But he’s also suspected of having paid $2 million to Michel Platini, the head of European soccer, who is a leading candidate to replace Blatter.

Papal Fiat: Pope Francis, who takes his vow of poverty seriously, has shunned big limousines and the bullet-proof “Pope mobile” to tour the streets of America in a four-seat Fiat 500L.(MSRP “starting at $19,345.”)

It looks like a clown car dwarfed by its escort vehicles.

The Pope who carries his own luggage shrugs at the security concerns. “It’s true that anything could happen,” he told a Spanish newspaper. “But let’s face it: At my age, I don’t have much to lose.”