Ted Cruz blasted by angry GOP colleagues  —  Ted Cruz faced a barrage of hostile questions Wednesday from angry GOP senators, who lashed the Texas tea party freshman for helping prompt a government shutdown crisis without a strategy to end it.  —  At a closed-door lunch meeting …

Poll: Americans not happy about shutdown; more blame GOP  —  PLAY CBS NEWS VIDEO  —  On day three of the partial government shutdown, a new CBS News poll reveals that a large majority of Americans disapprove of the shutdown and more are blaming Republicans than President Obama and the Democrats for it.

In Showdown With G.O.P., a Scrappy Reid Plays Hardball  —  WASHINGTON — It was not enough for Senator Harry Reid to just dismiss Republican offers as “vexatious” or “kid's stuff” or “one cockamamie, can't-pass idea after another.”  He called the White House and asked it to issue a veto threat, which it promptly did.

California exchange overstated its Web traffic for Obamacare launch  —  Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, discusses the launch of the state's insurance exchange Tuesday in Los Angeles.  (Reed Saxon/AP / October 2, 2013)  —  California's health insurance exchange vastly overstated …

Kent Sorenson resigns from Senate  —  Investigation into Bachmann payments finds ‘probable cause’ he broke ethics rules  —  Iowa senator resigns amid ethics probe: Des Moines Register politics editor Carol Hunter and Statehouse reporter Jason Noble discuss the resignation of Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson.

Denny Hastert Disses the ‘Hastert Rule’: It ‘Never Really Existed’  —  The former Republican speaker's ‘rule,’ that you can't bring legislation to the House floor without a majority of GOP votes, is cited as the reason Boehner can't end the shutdown.  But Hastert tells Eleanor Clift it's a ‘non-entity’ …

Meet Butch Matthews, A Republican Who Came To Love Obamacare After Realizing It Will Save Him $13,000  —  61-year-old Butch Matthews, left, with his wife Debbie  —  Butch Matthews is a 61-year-old former small business owner from Little Rock, Arkansas who used to wake up every morning at 4 …

Brendan Mahoney Saves ObamaCare  —  Great news!  They got a 30-year-old dude to sign up!  —  “People complain of having to stand in line for hours, often in vain, and many are losing patience with the government's explanation that unsavory conspirators are to blame for the nation's problems,” reports the New York Times.

The Closing of Diane Ravitch's Mind  —  Education writer and activist Diane Ravitch is very angry these days.  She's convinced herself and her followers that elements of the American corporate elite are working to destroy the nation's public schools, the indispensable institution that has held …

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: McDonald's Employee Admits Being Paid $15 to Protest WW2 Veterans (UPDATED 2x)  —  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 …