Holding Firm  —  The same question keeps popping up: why doesn't Speaker John Boehner just pass a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government?  It's a ubiquitous query at the Capitol, and it was asked many times this afternoon as House Republicans left their closed-door conference meeting.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: McDonald's Employee Admits Being Paid $15 to Protest WW2 Veterans (UPDATED)  —  Yesterday I reported from the National World War Two Memorial on several members of Congress crashing the barricades set up by the National Park Service that were keeping out several hundred Honor Flight veterans …

Tom Clancy, Best-Selling Novelist of Military Thrillers, Dies at 66  —  Tom Clancy, whose complex, adrenaline-fueled military novels made him one of the world's best-selling and best-known authors, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Baltimore.  He was 66.  —  Ivan Held, the president …

Exclusive: Mia Farrow and Eight of Her Children Speak Out on Their Lives, Frank Sinatra, and the Scandals They've Endured  —  See a slide show of Mia's children and quotes from Orth's piece.  —  Twenty years after Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth reported on the sexual-abuse …

Grover Norquist on Ted Cruz: ‘He pushed House Republicans into traffic and wandered away’  —  Grover Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform and the creator of the anti-tax pledge that nearly every Republican in Congress has signed.  We spoke on Tuesday about the government shutdown and its consequences for his agenda.

The shutdown is the Constitution's fault  —  You made this happen, buster.  (National Archives)  —  The government is shut down.  Two million federal workers are having paychecks delayed, and 800,000 of them might never be repaid at all.  Food safety inspections are on hold.

US government shutdown: Barack Obama looks like a bitter, petty and partisan president  —  The American Left's hatred for all things conservative has been on full display in Washington in recent days, with the White House and its allies in Congress heaving with anger and indignation …

The truth is, Americans love Obamacare  —  Among the many delusions guiding the Republican campaign against the Affordable Care Act, surely the most consistent is the idea that the public detests the law and is clamoring for repeal.  —  Here's the truth: The American public loves Obamacare …

Why Are So Many People in a Blind Rage These Days?  —  Paul Waldman, as he so often does, says what I've been thinking: … Roger that.  But then he adds this: … This is conventional wisdom, of course.  The reason the tea party caucus isn't willing to compromise is because there's no pressure on them to compromise.

What Happens to Conservatism When the Obamacare War Is Over?  —  When we look back decades from now, one of the keys to understanding this period in our political history will be the story of how a set of market-based health insurance reforms that started as a proposal from the Heritage Foundation …

Bank CEOs huddle with Obama  —  Top banking executives emerged from a meeting with President Obama on Wednesday warning of the “extremely adverse” consequences of a national default.  —  Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said there is broad agreement in the banking industry that the debt ceiling …