Who Really Wants a Shutdown?  —  President Obama does, but the GOP's strategy is a lot less clear.  —  For people who keep saying they don't want a government shutdown, Washington's warring parties are sure acting like they can't wait for it to happen.  Since the policy stakes …

What Planned Parenthood actually does  —  With Planned Parenthood being either the major obstacle to a budget deal or one of the major obstacles to a budget deal, it's worth taking a minute explaining what they do — and what they don't do.  —  As you can see in the chart atop this post …

Vote-Counting Error In Wisconsin Points to Incompetence, Not Conspiracy  —  When Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, spoke to the press on Thursday after revealing that she had failed to count more than 14,000 ballots in the hotly contested state supreme court election …

The Ryan Journey  —  For decades, academics and think tankers have been proposing plans to avert a fiscal catastrophe.  The ensuing debates were always sedate, high-minded affairs.  Now Republican political leaders have come up with a bold proposal of their own and the atmosphere is totally different.

Paying for What We Get  —  Andrew Sullivan writes today that healthcare costs are skyrocketing and there are basically two way to rein them in: … I think half of this is right, but the other half betrays a fundamental (though common) misconception about how politics actually works.

Rep. Louise Slaughter: GOP Freshmen Came to Washington ‘To Kill Women’  —  (CNSNews.com) - Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said today that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress “to kill women.”  She also likened Republican efforts …

Cathie Black vows to come back: “I'm a warrior”  —  Few career falls are as swift and spectacular as Cathie Black's.  —  It took just 95 days for the former boss of Hearst Magazines — and alum of the Fortune Most Powerful Women list — to get ousted as chancellor of New York City public schools.

Optimism in the House  —  A House staffer emails:  —  Post Comment  —  Pages  —  Ben Smith passes along an anonymous email, from someone quoting hearsay.  This is, sadly, the “journalism” we've come to expect from Ben.  —  Who cares!  —  Posted By: Who cares!  April 08, 2011 at 02:38 PM

Christie takes a cheap shot at Springsteen  —  He can't help himself, our governor.  In less than a year and a half, he's demonized more people than the Salem witch trials — if they had been run by Judge Judy: Democrats.  Teachers.  Superintendents.  Public workers.  State Supreme Court justices.

Commander in Chief's Appalling Action with Our Troops  —  Yesterday the House passed H.R. 1363, which funds our Department of Defense and our military for the rest of the year at their current levels.  It allows for the continuation of current military operations, which is pretty important when you're fighting three wars.

G-A-Y Exclusive: National Organization For Marriage tour organizer/Facebook moderator does startling about-face; Exposure to NOM could lead to unintended side effects  —  Louis Marinelli first came on our radar late last spring, when he started independently Tweeting under the name “NOMUpdates”: