Ted Cruz, House Republicans Meet in Secret at Tortilla Coast  —  Sen. Ted Cruz met with roughly 15 to 20 House Republicans for around two hours late Monday night at the Capitol Hill watering hole Tortilla Coast.  —  The group appeared to be talking strategy about how they should respond …

The default has already begun  —  The big question in Washington this week is whether, in the words of the NYT, we're going to see “a legislative failure and an economic catastrophe that could ripple through financial markets, foreign capitals, corporate boardrooms, state budget offices and the bank accounts of everyday investors”.

2 DAYS TO DEBT DEADLINE; SHUTDOWN DAY 15 — SENATE NEAR DEAL to postpone both cliffs to next year — HOUSE UNDER PRESSURE: 'won't be pretty' — WILL REPUBLICANS BE LEFT with little but bad polls?  —  DATA DU JOUR - DISapproval for handling of budget crisis, in new ABC News/WashPost poll …

NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally  —  The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials …

'The Kelly File's' surge is legit, Nielsen says  —  MSNBC had questioned Fox News show's 100% ratings increase  —  Megyn Kelly hosts the Fox News Channel's new show “The Kelly File.”  —  Nielsen has conducted an investigation into the ratings for Megyn Kelly's new Fox News Channel show …

Panetta rebukes Obama's handling of shutdown  —  Leon Panetta served in Washington with nine presidents, starting with Lyndon Johnson.  He has been a member of Congress, Office of Management and Budget director, White House chief of staff, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary …

13 THINGS THAT DEFINE THE NEW AMERICAN CENTER  —  It is bigger than you think...  An exclusive Esquire-NBC News survey shows us that everything we are told about politics in America today—that there is no middle ground between left and right, blue and red, us and them—is wrong.

A Fox Is Living on the White House Grounds and No One Can Catch It Because of the Shutdown  —  Really.  —  A fox.  Unfortunately, no pictures of the White House fox are available.  (jans canon/Flickr)  —  Illustrators of children's books, here is your next story:

McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli by 7 points as Va. voters blame GOP for shutdown  —  Virginia voters looking for somebody to blame for the government shutdown impacting federal workers in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads have settled on gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli …

I, Rielle Hunter, Apologize  —  I behaved badly.  That may seem obvious to you but it's taken me a long time to admit that, even to myself.  For years I was so viciously attacked by the media and the world that I felt like a victim.  I now realize that the attacks are actually beside the point.

Holy war in Harlem: Pastors want Al Sharpton out  —  Four prominent clergymen invited over 100 churches to unify in an attempt dethrone Reverend Al Sharpton.  —  (left to right) Carl Washington, Pastor New Mt Zion Baptist Church, Kris Erskine, Pastor Bethany Baptist Church and Patrick Young …

U.S. Economic Confidence Continues to Slide Amid Shutdown  —  Index score of -39 worst since November 2011  —  PRINCETON, NJ — As the government shutdown continued for a second week and Washington leaders scrambled to avoid a default on U.S. debt obligations, Americans' confidence in the economy continued to erode last week.

Obamacare Needs a Drop-Dead Date  —  Exactly how bad are things on the federal health-care exchanges?  The working assumption among most journalists, including me, is that they would be fixed in a few weeks — that is, by the end of this week.  But yesterday's New York Times brought …