For the past two weeks, President Obama has not had the legal authority from Congress to use military action in Libya. I know I'm being a stickler, but if we're going to get further and further involved in a third war with no plan in both the short and long term, then Congress should at the very least sign off on it as the law requires it to. The other option for Congress is to use its authority to end this altogether — which it appeared willing to do yesterday, before the Republican leadership pulled the vote from the floor.

Today marked a proud moment in the lives of graduating students and their families at Catholic University. Years of hard work and determination had finally paid off. And then John Boehner rolled in to deliver the commencement speech.

House Speaker John Boehner will tell a bunch of bankers tonight that his members won't accept a federal debt ceiling hike for anything less than "trillions" in spending cuts. This is an aggressive posture. Stupid arbitrary caps on stuff!

After the Obama administration announced it wouldn't defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, House Republicans decided to take charge instead. John Boehner hired lawyer and ex-Solicitor General Paul Clement of the firm King and Spaulding to defend it on behalf of the House Republicans at the taxpayer funded rate of $520 per hour. But this morning King and Spaulding dropped the terribly unpopular case, and Paul Clement quit the firm to defend DOMA on his own.

Former Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement, the lawyer House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) chose to support the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on behalf of Congress, will be paid $520 per hour in taxpayer money up to $500,000, according to a contract his law firm signed with the General Counsel of the House and the House Administration Committee.

House Speaker John Boehner has a message for Mexicans: Drop dead. No, we're sure he loves the Mexicans. But not enough to throw them, and Americans of Mexican heritage, a Capitol Hill party for Cinco de Mayo.

Confusing math problems weren't enough to stop the House from passing the Obama-Boehner budget compromise on a bipartisan vote of 260-167 this afternoon. Passage in the Senate will be easy, and President Obama will sign it.

So the deal for the "largest spending cut in history" that no one knew the components of until ~5 minutes ago is coming up for rubber-stamping today, to avoid a government shutdown. The votes are expected to be there. But maybe we'll get lucky and the government of the greatest nation in the history of the world will shut down anyway, over confusing math.

Okay, banksters, let's call a temporary truce: We'll stop calling you sociopathic bloodsucking hell monsters for a few weeks, if you can just get Speaker John Boehner to stop using the impending debt ceiling vote as leverage to cut basically every entitlement program. We're all in this together against the dingbats who don't understand that failing to raise the debt ceiling means Global Apocalypse, not "tightening our belts" or whatever other homey metaphor that doesn't apply to macroeconomic reality.

Fresh off last week's down-to-the-wire spending showdown, President Obama and Speaker John Boehner are locking horns again on fiscal matters — and this time the stakes for the U.S. economy are even more monumental.

The city of Washington D.C. will be hammered by a prolonged government shutdown. The D.C. government manages its own budget, but because of its unique form of slavery, the money technically needs to be appropriated by the House of Representatives. And since "government shutdown" is just the shorthand term for "no appropriations," the city government of Washington D.C. can only offer essential services during a shutdown. In other words, no trash pick up! So some residents are just planning to dump their waste outside Speaker John Boehner's "house" instead, which is kind of mean.

Twelve hours until the government shuts down, people! Actually eleven hours and some minutes! Progress was made last evening, however. The only inflexible issue that hasn't been negotiated out, according to everyone, is the few hundred million dollars in federal subsidies for Planned Parenthood.

Today we heard that the government shutdown brought crybaby John Boehner to tears. And he's the head of all Republicans! (Well, a lot anyway.) What does this say, then, about the group as a whole? One commenter assessed.

The president has convened a late night (for Washington) meeting tonight to solve the budget crisis before tomorrow night's government shutdown. 8:45 p.m. White House. Harry Reid and John Boehner will be there. Will you? Obviously not, because you're just some random person reading this website.

During a closed-door meeting today, Speaker John Boehner "thanked the House Republicans for standing by him and supporting him through these tense negotiations," for which he received a standing ovation. Then he cried again. Can we ban Congress now?

Funding for the federal government will only last three more days, and leaders of both parties say they have no interest in working out a stop-gap measure for another week or two. "Secret negotiations led by Joe Biden" — which in the late '70s, at least, was Capitol Police code for late night swingers' parties in the Congressional Gym — haven't proven to be very successful. Will these dumpheads ever agree on a compromise to their $30-$60 billion in harsh social services cuts that won't have any significant effect on budgets during a time with massive unemployment and suffering and death everywhere?

National Tea Party groups had planned to make a statement to lawmakers today with a well-publicized rally on Capitol Hill. Hordes of attendees were going to demand that wavering Republican members of Congress not compromise halfway with Democrats on a budget deal. A compromise for $33 billion in cuts instead of the Republicans' maximalist proposal of $61 billion, Tea Party folks believe, would be a betrayal of promises made during the 2010 election. So the Tea Party held its big important rally this afternoon as planned — but it only drew "perhaps a couple hundred" attendees. C'mon, Tea Party! Get your act together, or go extinct.

In case you've forgotten, the Republicans control the House of Representatives now. Yes, the American one! But do they remember how to greet foreign dignitaries and other fancy people after their four-year exile in power? Not really, so John Boehner had to send a staffer to etiquette school.

The Republican plan to cut government spending by more than $60 billion dollars will cost the unemployment rate dearly, according to a new report from Moody's Analytics.

When Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Speaker of the House John Boehner about his smoking habit, he snapped back: "Why do you bring this up again? It's a legal product. I choose to smoke it. Leave me alone."