Nikki Haley, the young Indian-American governor of South Carolina, was on The View to talk about her new book Can’t Is Not An Option, but the segment ended up going in a surprising number of directions. First, Barbara Walters asked Haley about rumors that Mitt Romney may be considering her as his running mate in the 2012 election. She deflected the rumors by saying that if asked, she would refuse, since she “made a promise to the people of [South Carolina]” to serve her term through 2015.

The View was on hiatus when the Trayvon Martin story began to slowly spiral out of control, so it was a given that some attention would be paid to the growing scandal when the show returned this morning.

Oh The View, your particular blend of news, politics and whimsy was sorely missed over the last two weeks!

It was ostensibly an opportunity to interview Annie Potts about her new ABC show, GCB, which stands for “Good Christian Bitches” because that’s the world we live in now.

Well, The View panel took the opportunity to get real personal this morning while discussing an interview with 7-months-pregnant Jessica Simpson, who was very candid about revealing that being with child has improved her sex life.

On the show this morning, Whoopi Goldberg brought up a recent decision by the Transportation Security Administration to give traveling seniors over 75 a break when going through security, allowing them to leave their shoes on and be subjected to fewer pat downs in line.

Earlier on today’s episode of The View, Barbara Walters noted that, while she didn’t want to get personal, “some of us [on the panel] are making more than our husbands.” (Sherri Shepherd seemed to nod at this point — interesting!) Walters wanted to know how, when women are the breadwinners, they can still make their husbands feel like they’re “on top…so to speak.”

This morning, the panel talked about a new bill introduced to regulate the sale of Viagra, as a clear symbolic response to the debate over hormonal birth control that has been raging during the primary season, and whose flames were stoked by Rush Limbaugh over a week ago.

This morning, The View panel took on HBO’s “Game Change,” the film based on the bestselling book about the 2008 campaign. Joy Behar watched the movie over the weekend and talked about her surprise at seeing how unprepared Sarah Palin was for the campaign, “as are a lot of the candidates that we’ve been watching in the primary debates.”

“We can’t seem to get away from Rush Limbaugh,” Barbara Walters said at the beginning of today’s episode of The View. Yes, the controversial radio host was the first hot topic on the show. Again. This time, the panel was discussing an open letter written by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan calling for Limbaugh’s show to be taken off the air, because although he may be “constitutionally entitled to his opinions,” they argued that he was not entitled to express them on the radio.

Well, today was a weird day! 50 Cent was on The View, looking pretty uncomfortable, to promote a new book he wrote on bullying, and also a line of headphones he designed that are linked to a charity that provides meals to people in third world countries with every purchase.

Bill O’Reilly was one of the featured guests on The View this morning , and they rolled out the red carpet for him (i.e. he got to sit on the couch rather than join them at the table. The hosts wasted no time asking him his opinion on the Rush Limbaugh debacle, which he characterized as “inappropriate.” He went on to say that Rush’s remarks obscured the bigger issue, which is the “entitlement state versus Ms. Fluck’s [sic] opinion” on birth control.

Barbara Walters took a brief detour from pop psychology studies and “Dance Moms” footage to run down the list of Super Tuesday primary winners for the panel, noting Mitt Romney’s ever-expanding lead (although he is still several hundred delegates short of securing the nomination).

The View tackled Kirk Cameron’s rather controversial views on homosexuality, which he was asked about in a recent Piers Morgan Tonight appearance. Cameron told Morgan that he thought that homosexuality was detrimental to society, and that if one of his six children believed he or she was gay he would do his best to talk him or her out of it. Yiiiiikes! Elisabeth Hasselbeck admitted that, although her walls used to be festooned with Kirk Cameron memorabilia when she was a teenager, she finds him to be completely in the wrong here.

The Rush Limbaugh birth control scandal of 2012 rages on, and The View panel took a moment to discuss the fallout, including the twelve advertisers who have pulled funding from the show since the backlash from his remarks about Sandra Fluke began.

Laura Ingraham appeared on Tuesday’s Fox & Friends, and spoke out about the controversy swirling around Rush Limbaugh’s remarks to Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke. Co-host Gretchen Carlson asked the conservative radio host whether there was a double-standard when liberals use slurs against conservatives.

The View had newly famous Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke on the show today, after Fluke was referred to as a “slut” and a “prostitute” by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show last week.

Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner completed The View panel this morning, and she wasted no time getting into uncomfortable subjects when she began talking about her efforts to keep things “spicy” in her 21 year marriage to Bruce Jenner. Yikes!

Nancy Grace and The View panel were very cordial this morning — at least until minute 14 of the broadcast, when the conversation turned to Grace’s insinuation after Whitney Houston’s death that there may have been someone with her at the time of her death “who let her slip or pushed her underneath the water.”

The View had quite a guest of honor this morning — Israeli President Shimon Peres, who is in the United States for a meeting with the president, and decided appear on daytime television while he was in the neighborhood. Why not?

The View co-host Kathy Ireland had some strong opinions today on a recent bill introduced in Arizona that would require phone companies to give parents access to their children’s text messages.

Today is the Michigan primary, which is open to both Republican and Democratic voters, and Barbara Walters took a moment on The View today to urge the audience to pay attention to the results. This afforded Elisabeth Hasselbeck the opportunity to jump in and turn on one of her own!

Whoopi Goldberg is out of town, and so the unfortunate soul selected to sit in “The Whoopi Cushion” for today’s show was R&B star Mary J. Blige. The panel asked her about her recent experience attending Whitney Houston’s memorial service, which she went to despite her normal policy of never going to funerals

Kathy Gingrich Lubber and Jackie Gingrich Cushman, daughters of Newt Gingrich from his first marriage to Jackie Battley, appeared on The View today in matching cardigans to argue that their dad should be the next President of the United States. Their dad being who he is, however, they spent most of their time defending his personal life.

I’ve been watching The View for many years (since the Meredith Vieira/Lisa Ling/gauzy opening credits sequence days!), but I feel like today my obsession with the show has been validated, since a segment from last week basically saved someone’s life.