- Senate Leaders Talk but Fail to Reach Deal on Shutdown—"An impasse over the spending level for a stopgap measure to reopen the government was a stumbling block as Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell [Politico] spoke cordially but fruitlessly by phone." NYT
- Senate Republicans: Undoing sequester spending caps a nonstarter WaPo
- Bill Richardson: I’ve made deals with dictators. Here’s my advice for Congress. WaPo
- Rich: The Furies Never End—"The shutdown crisis is nothing we haven’t seen before. A good portion of America has been trying to sabotage the government for almost our entire history."
- Zakaria: No place for hostage taking in democracy
- Krugman: The Dixiecrat Solution—"Can we end the crisis in governance with a new alliance in Congress?" NYT
- Sullivan: This Is Where We Are—"This is not an alternative budget; it is not another way of insuring millions and cutting healthcare costs; it is not a contribution to anything but to the logic of nullification of an election."
- Chris Hedges: The Folly of Empire—"In dying empires like our own, the people glorify idiotic leaders and blissfully ignore the looming collapse."
- The ire next time—"Whatever else came out of the shutdown, President Barack Obama said he wanted two things to change: no more negotiating under threat. And no more lurching from crisis to crisis."
- To end government shutdowns, end partisan gerrymandering
- A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman's Fall
- U.S. just days away from 'very dangerous moment': World Bank
- Commentary: U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world
- Poll: Most Americans Don't Understand the Debt Ceiling
- The American Public's Shocking Lack of Policy Knowledge is a Threat to Progress and Democracy
- The GOP's Backdoor Impeachment Scheme—"Republicans have lost at the ballot box and the Supreme Court, so they’ve decided to nullify President Obama another way: keep his government from working, period."
- House Republicans Changed The Rules So A Majority Vote Couldn't Stop The Government Shutdown—Watch how they spin. This just refutes their claim Obama refuses to 'negotiate'.
- The GOP's latest poison pill—"The debt-ceiling deal House Republicans are working on is going nowhere." WaPo
- Krugman: Business and the GOP—The two tend to stick together even in bad times, but how much worse can this relationship take? NYT
- Fox History vs. Actual History: Fox's Shutdown Timeline Omits The Role Of The GOP
- Let's Evaluate the Accuracy of This GOP Statement: "We're Winning" Like Charlie Sheen!—Hashtag winning.
- Shutdown polls: How markets and election fears are forcing Republicans to end the debt ceiling fight.
- The Inevitable Republican Collapse That Will End the Shutdown—The crisis in Washington is grinding, miserably, to a close. Here's who wins, and how it shakes out."
- Chris Christie Slams Congress—"I don't worry about the Republican brand. Not my job to worry about it."
- Fearing a lost governor's race, Virginia Republicans confront party divide WaPo
- Schumer: 'Mainstream Republicans' Fed Up With Tea Party, Ted Cruz
- John Boehner's only choice: Throw the Tea Party overboard—"There is no deal that is acceptable to both the Tea Party and Obama and Senate Democrats. Therefore, the only way out is through an alliance of Dems and non-Tea Party Republicans." WaPo
- Debt limit defeat turns conservatives into neo-Confederate fantasists—"A deal is close and the contours are clear. The Tea Party has been routed: So why are true believers delusional?" Salon
- The shutdown has shown: What's good for Ted Cruz is not good for the Republican Party WaPo
- The Ten Hardline Conservatives Pulling the Strings of the GOP Shutdown
- The South is holding America hostage—"The Tea Party's not crazy -- they had a plan. Now liberals and progressives need one, too." Salon
- For the GOP, rightward ho!—"Former Sen. Jim DeMint wants 'true conservatives' only."
- Dowd: A Mad Tea Party NYT
- Now I Understand Why People Believe What They Hear on Fox News
- Rallier tells Obama to 'put the Quran down'
- Nine ways the shutdown will get more painful as it drags on WaPo
- 'Million Vet March' Storms D.C. Memorials—And some photo-op-seeking politicians showed up trying to co-opt the event.
- Foreclosures Surge in D.C. Area After Federal Budget Cuts
- Why Shutting Down U.S. Antarctic Research Will Have Global Repercussions
- 'It is time to tell Congress to go to hell'—"Federal judges, long used to being blasted as 'judicial activists' by members of Congress, are now directing a stream of anger and vitriol right back at Capitol Hill." Politico
- The Right's Obamacare Rhetoric Is Completely Detached from Reality
- Gay community 'Coming Out' to enroll in Obamacare
- Single-Payer Prescription for What Ails Obamacare
- Court: NSA can continue sweeping phone data collection—Rubber-stamping your freedoms away.
- Effort underway to declassify document that is legal foundation for NSA phone program WaPo
- N.S.A. Director Firmly Defends Surveillance Efforts—"While acknowledging shortfalls in response to Edward J. Snowden's revelations, General Keith B. Alexander said the agency was doing more 'to protect people's civil liberties and privacy than they'll ever know.'"
- Intelligence oversight has some limits in Congress—"The White House insists members of Congress knew full well about the National Security Agency's almost unabridged ability to scan phone logs and Internet chats for terrorist threats.... But evidence of the NSA's many privacy missteps wasn’t widely shared on Capitol Hill, even during crucial moments when Congress voted to reauthorize the government’s controversial surveillance powers." Politico
- US fears back-door routes into the net because it's building them too—"If the Snowden revelations have taught us anything, it's that the NSA has been up to the sort of covert practices it claims to be so concerned about."
- Hillary Clinton: We need a sensible adult conversation about state surveillance—We need to have a sensible adult conversation about what is necessary to be done, and how to do it, in a way that is as transparent as it can be, with as much oversight and citizens' understanding as there can be." Step one: Stop the lies.
- NSA Veterans: The White House Is Hanging Us Out to Dry
- Snowden: mass surveillance making us less safe
- DoJ: If we can track one American, we can track all Americans—They're not even prentending to care anymore.
- Growing backlash to government surveillance—"From Silicon Valley to the South Pacific, counterattacks to revelations of widespread National Security Agency surveillance are taking shape, from a surge of new encrypted email programs to technology that sprinkles the Internet with red flag terms to confuse would-be snoops."
- Lavabit's appeal: We're actually not required to wiretap our own users—"The government wanted Snowden. But what about Lavabit's other 400,000 customers?"
- How To Talk About The Government Investigating You When You Can't Legally Talk About the Government Investigating You
- Snowden: US govt allows top officials to lie to Congress, yet prosecutes truth-tellers
- Snowden's CIA bosses suspected he'd leak files in '09, didn't warn NSA
- Editors on the NSA files: 'What the Guardian is doing is important for democracy'—"On Thursday the Daily Mail described the Guardian as 'The paper that helps Britain's enemies'. We showed that article to many of the world's leading editors. This is what they said."
- Guardian was 'entirely correct' to publish NSA stories, says Vince Cable—"Business secretary confirms Nick Clegg is to launch review of oversight of intelligence agencies."
- The secret state is just itching to gag the press—"Get regulation wrong, and it won't be tales of Cheryl Cole that are censored, but revelations like those of Edward Snowden."
- 6 Whistleblowers Who Turned Out To Be Right After Being Ignored
- In Obama's war on leaks, reporters fight back WaPo
- Obama's efforts to control leaks 'most aggressive since Nixon', report finds—"Administration's tactics, which include using Espionage Act to pursue leakers, have had chilling effect on accountability – study."
- 'Say no to Internet censorship' petition nears 100K signatures—"One of the topics at the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade agreement talks is how to better control the Internet. Some people don't like this." Sign the petition.
- Internet freedom on decline worldwide as governments tighten grip
- EU court holds news website liable for readers' comments
- Britain's harsh crackdown on Internet porn prompts free-speech debate WaPo
- Supreme Court Declines to Decide When Online Speech Becomes an Illegal Threat
- Whatever Happened to "Due Process" ?
- The US is losing control of the internet—"All of the major internet organisations have pledged, at a summit in Uruguay, to free themselves of the influence of the US government."
- Amid NSA Outrage, Big Tech Companies Plan to Track You Even More Aggressively
- Skype under investigation in Luxembourg over link to NSA—"Ten years ago, the calling service had a reputation as a tool for evading surveillance but now it is under scrutiny for covertly passing data to government agencies."
- German telecoms giant plans to thwart foreign spying on web
- Careful what you tweet: Police, schools tap social media to track behavior
- Time for us all to take charge of our personal data
- Google to Sell Users' Endorsements—"A change in its terms of service would let Google include users' names, photos and comments in ads across the Web." NYT
- How to keep your real name and face out of Google's ads
- Mass.' Markey wants FTC to probe Google changes
