govt shutdown looms

[Danzig]

and here, from will saletan (one i don't always agree with, but always read)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...le_ground.html

Republicans pretend there’s lots of precedent for this sort of “compromise.” They point to 17 previous shutdowns (helpfully outlined by Dylan Matthews in the Washington Post), most of which were resolved by concessions. But when you examine these cases, the claims of resemblance evaporate.



The present shutdown threat is nothing like those cases. For the first time, a single party, controlling a single house of Congress—despite having lost the popular vote for that chamber by more than a million ballots in the most recent election—is refusing to fund the government unless the other chamber and the president agree to suspend previously enacted legislation.


Sorry, Republicans. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes a single house of Congress to retroactively veto U.S. law by refusing to fund the rest of the government. The manner in which you’re attempting this blackmail—on party-line votes, engineered by the party that lost the popular vote—doesn’t help. The Senate and the president have no legal or moral obligation to humor your demands. Do your job, or we’ll throw you out.