One of the most highly publicized -- and criticized -- presidential vacations is over. After two weeks at Martha's Vineyard -- interrupted by a strange 48-hour round trip to Washington costing taxpayers a million dollars -- President Obama returned to the White House in the wake of condemnation from many quarters of his aloof attitude, happily playing golf amid grimly serious situations at home and abroad.

Maybe it was to convince Americans he could keep a cool head in times of impending crisis, but for whatever reason former President George W. Bush took the ice bucket challenge and got doused by his wife Laura. He then challenged his predecessor, Bill Clinton, to follow suit in the popular movement to raise money for the charity that fights ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Normally members of Congress spend the August recess campaigning in their home states or going on exotic overseas junkets. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chose to do neither. He tweeted that he and his wife, Barbara, were "retracing our honeymoon of 60 years." Grassley didn't disclose the itinerary except to say that one stop was in the "South Dakota Badlands".