Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

The government went into shutdown late last night as Congress failed to pass a funding bill before the midnight deadline. What does this mean for you? Well, planes will soon start falling out of the sky, and all nuclear bombs will soon self-detonate. Sorry, confusing it with Y2K. It means that all non-essential government functions will cease operation until a funding bill is passed and signed into law.

Now that we’re here, how does a shutdown end? It hinges in part on a tedious but important political ritual known as the blame game: Which side’s spin about how the other side “shut down the government” carries the day in public opinion. Once one side has been ef

See Full Page