But I thought the GOP was behaving like this on behalf of America? "By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama—a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96."

Remember how Congressional Republicans went to the shut-down World War II Memorial to protest the fact that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives had just shut down the government? In a spectacular meta-expansion of that story line, today's New York Times checks in with the right-wing organizations that spent millions on millions of dollars to elect and entrench a Republican majority in the House. They're upset.

House Republicans suggested interest in a short-term debt limit increase today in a move that would temporarily prevent the United States from defaulting. Hooray! Of course this means nothing for the government shutdown, and now you can look forward to more pathetic debt-limit brinkmanship taking place right around the holidays. God kill us, everyone.

Finally: A website that takes the guess work out of drunk-dialing members of Congress — by drunk-dialing a member of Congress for you.

We're now in week two of a government shutdown. What's happening?

GOP Rep. Phil Gingrey puts the shutdown into context by comparing Republican stubbornness to a Mel Gibson movie: "I mean, they seem to think that we will miss this opportunity for a 'Braveheart' moment to do the right thing for the American people, and that we'll back down for fear of losing the House..."

When it comes to confronting its own historically low approval ratings, Congress is less of head-on type than a head-up-its-own-ass type.

While thousands of frustrated park service employees sit at home waiting anxiously for the shutdown to end, one private citizen has taken it upon himself to keep DC clean whether politicians like it or not.

House Speaker John Boehner has responded to President Obama's speech earlier today by characterizing it as a demand for "unconditional surrender" by Republicans. Meanwhile, one global market-research firm says the shutdown is costing the American economy $160 million per workday.

While politicians argue incessantly around President Obama's healthcare system overhaul, one thing gets frequently lost in the din: Does Obamacare actually improve America's healthcare system.

In a shutdown statement followed by a press conference this afternoon, President Obama said much of the same things about America's government standstill that he's been saying since last week: This is a situation caused by a handful of recalcitrant GOP jackasses who are unwilling to talk reasonably about how to end this mess. It is impossible to overstate this fact.

Having had his fill of Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) trying to mislead his Monday night viewers with bogus claims about Obamacare and the cooked-up reasons for why Republicans refuse to bring a clean continuing resolution up for a vote, Anderson Cooper to make good on his promise to "keep them honest."

While this government shutdown has seen its fair share of euphemisms, one man spent every day last week telling lawmakers exactly how he felt — and right to their faces, no less.

A top Republican member of the House gathered a group of sympathetic reporters last Thursday to tell his party's side of the shutdown story, which involved an anecdote comparing the GOP to Confederate troops at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The most widely circulated anti-shutdown tweet to date got a "dramatic reading" on the House floor late last week, courtesy of Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA).

Someone at the National Weather Service's Anchorage, Alaska, outpost had an acrostic for the federal government hidden in one of its updates today: "Please pay us."

Thanks to this unbelievably asinine government shutdown, thousands and thousands of furloughed employees are getting royally screwed. But a gentle reminder that even excepted employees have been shafted too, employees like the corrections officers who're tasked with the Very Important Patriotic Work of guarding marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The government shutdown has already caused thousands of federal workers to be furloughed. Now, a tipster tells us, a rumor is going around among Washington, DC city workers that they could be furloughed as early as Monday. If you know more, leave it in the discussion section below. (Update: The DC mayor's office denies this possibility.)

Mike and his fiancée MaiLien were all set to get married this Saturday on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial when the government shutdown abruptly shut down their dreams.

Though dozens of her colleagues have decided to either forego receiving a paycheck or else donate their salary to charity while the government is shut down and hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) is adamant about making sure her $174k/year plus benefits remain undisturbed.