The Senate and House finally passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and re-open the government late last night. What an worthless waste of time and money these past two weeks have been.
A collection of animations about Congress and the government shutdown (click on each image):
The Speaker and the nutty conservatives who lead him continue to drag the rest of America further into the hole they’ve been digging. Last night the House again failed to come up with a plan to lift the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown- so they basically threw the mess into the Senate’s lap and went home. 
Ted Cruz held a secret meeting at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant last night.
Here’s a well-informed Supreme Court Justice of the United States. According to a New York Magazine article, Justice Scalia only reads The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. He admits he gets most of his news from talk radio and his favorite host is Bill Bennett.
*update: Be sure to read Justice Scalia’s answer to why he became an avid hunter. Scalia recounts when his grandfather and namesake Antonino became too old to go out into the woods, he would sit on the back porch and shoot rabbits who ventured out in the vegetable garden. When the interviewer suggests this isn’t a very sporting way to hunt, Scalia excuses it because his grandfather was 85 at the time. I wonder if Justice Scalia will be metaphorically shooting defenseless things from the Court bench in his old age…
*update #2: “… the only heroic opinion I ever issued— was my statement refusing to recuse”, Justice Scalia said of his decision not to recuse himself from the case which involved former Vice-president Cheney, his hunting buddy. If I can find the cartoon I did about that case, I’ll post it soon.
Found it! From 2004:
It’s the first day of the Supreme Court’s 2013 term. Head over to SCOTUSblog to read about what’s coming up.
I know that people’s attentions will be on the government shutdown and horrible shooting yesterday, but there’s a very worthwhile march happening today in Washington, DC to highlight the plight of elephants. Ivory belongs to the elephants.
We’re in day 2 of the Government Shutdown. The Republicans are trying to change the narrative from the fact they caused the shutdown over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), so they’re proposing to open parts of the governments to appeal to certain groups of voters. 
So we’re back at a government shutdown, the first in 17 years. At midnight tonight 800,000 workers will be furloughed, basically because the Tea Party Republicans refuse to accept that Obamacare is law and have turned Speaker Boehner into just a mouthpiece for their cause.
If you went to the trouble of counting, there’s 42. That’s how many times the GOP leadership has held a vote to repeal/de-fund/kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Animation link
Another mass shooting in the United States. If I sound weary, it’s because I am. Although it’s early and details about the shooter are still emerging, the common ingredients are all there: easy access to guns, previous gun-related arrests, the powerful gun lobby, mental illness, and violent video games. Here’s a graphic reflecting who commits these mass shootings from Mother Jones:
I guess they forgot to include a graphic showing the male/female ratio.
Congress is returning today after their a 5 week recess (you had most of August off from your job, didn’t you?) to face the question of Syria. President Obama will also be making his case for airstrikes on six(!) networks today, followed by a Tuesday prime-time address from the White House.
Here’s what I thought in 2003 about Bush’s push for war in Iraq:
…and here’s what I think about Obama’s case for airstrikes in Syria.