What’s interesting in the news today?

The shutdown continues. And so does the petty nonsense and closings.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Most of the furloughed Department of Defense civilian employees will be recalled, according to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who acknowledged that government lawyers interpreted a Pentagon funding law passed on the eve of the shutdown too narrowly.

“Today I am announcing that most DOD civilians placed on emergency furlough during the government shutdown will be asked to return to work beginning next week,” Hagel said Saturday.”

“House Republicans passed the Pay Our Military Act to the Senate on the eve of the government shutdown in order to insulate the Pentagon from the effects of the lapse in government appropriations.

The Senate passed and President Obama signed the measure, but the Pentagon furloughed about 400,000 civilians anyway.”

Of course they did. This is supposed to be painful because that’s what Obama wants.

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Boehner continues to refuse a stand alone CR.

From Bloomberg  “U.S. Speaker John Boehner said the House can’t pass an increase to the U.S. debt ceiling without packaging it with other provisions — a nonstarter for President Barack Obama.

“We are not going to pass a clean debt limit,” Boehner said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program. “The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit.”

“Boehner said he believed the country could end up in default if Obama doesn’t negotiate. “That’s the path we’re on,” Boehner said.

Boehner’s comments came as the stalemate between the White House and House Republicans showed little sign of thawing just 11 days from when Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew told lawmakers the U.S. will exhaust measures to avoid breaching the debt ceiling. The House and Senate aren’t scheduled to be in session today and there are no meetings planned between the two sides.”

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Say it with me now….. Most transparent administration evah! 🙄

From HotAir  “Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama “Hope and Change” era? Good times, good times.  Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush.  Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources:

“A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and the intelligence agencies that told people to freeze and retain any e-mail, and presumably phone logs, of communications with me,” Sanger said. As a result, longtime sources no longer talk to him. “They tell me: ‘David, I love you, but don’t e-mail me. Let’s don’t chat until this blows over.’ ”

Sanger, who has worked for the Times in Washington for two decades, said, “This is most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

Many leak investigations include lie-detector tests for government officials with access to the information at issue. “Reporters are interviewing sources through intermediaries now,” Barr told me, “so the sources can truthfully answer on polygraphs that they didn’t talk to reporters.”

Nice.

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And a new term of the Supreme Court is about to start. Should be some interesting cases to follow.

From TheLATimes  “The Supreme Court term that opens Monday gives the court’s conservative bloc a clear opportunity to shift the law to the right on touchstone social issues such as abortion, contraception and religion, as well as the political controversy over campaign funding.