Rachel Maddow gave another one of her sprawling, brilliant and entertaining rants on her show last night when she broke down what exactly the Republicans accomplished by shutting down the government for the past 16 days. Spoiler alert: It's a big fat nothing. Read… 10/17/13 12:30pm 10/17/13 12:30pm

Despite the best efforts of Ted Cruz and Tea Party fun bunch, the government shutdown will likely end this evening. Leaders in the Senate will soon vote on a deal that, if passed and put on the desk of President Obama by midnight tonight, will both end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling by its October 17th… Read… 10/16/13 5:40pm 10/16/13 5:40pm

Now that the government shutdown is in what feels like it elevendieth week, everything seems too stupid to be real, and here's a perfect example of why: the GOP's continued insistence that the United States government remain in stinky, stale deadlock until liberals agree to allow business owners to bar the sluts who… Read… 10/15/13 7:20pm 10/15/13 7:20pm

This is incredibly fucked. Read… 10/12/13 4:00pm 10/12/13 4:00pm

Thanks to the furlough, all routine inspections of domestic food production (except for meat and poultry products) have stopped — and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is operating with a skeleton staff, was ill-equipped to deal with a recent salmonella outbreak that made hundreds of people sick in … Read… 10/10/13 11:50am 10/10/13 11:50am

SO, uh, his high school girlfriend was a completely reasonable person who just wanted to work together amicably to solve some shit and I do mean SHIT? Cool, cool. Read… 10/09/13 10:00pm 10/09/13 10:00pm

No, Miley Cyrus didn’t use the vaunted stage at NBC to douse her social media feud with Sinéad O’Connor with gasoline. She did, however, manage to participate in a “We Can’t Stop” parody that was just as topical. Read… 10/06/13 12:30pm 10/06/13 12:30pm

What do you do when you're a young public sector go-getter who suddenly finds herself bored, homebound, and sans paycheck thanks to the government shutdown? Something cheap, something stress relieving, something easy — why not post an ad to Craigslist's casual encounters section for "shutdown sex"? You certainly… Read… 10/04/13 3:50pm 10/04/13 3:50pm

Best rethink any glimmer of hope you might have had about Republicans in Congress and the Senate paying for the government shutdown come election season. As Daily Show correspondent John Oliver points out, Congress maintains a 90% incumbency rate despite only having a 10% approval rating. Basically, people loathe… Read… 10/03/13 10:50am 10/03/13 10:50am

Conservatives can't seem to be able to get their story straight on the government shutdown — some are claiming it's No Big Deal, while others are wringing their hands and wailing that it's the Obamapocalypse and that soon we'll all be personally bludgeoned to a pulp by bureaucrats wielding death panels. Both groups… Read… 10/02/13 4:30pm 10/02/13 4:30pm

Hero senator Elizabeth Warren had some choice words for the GOP the day before they effectively shut down the government. Read… 10/02/13 12:50pm 10/02/13 12:50pm

You know the "Cool" scene in West Side Story? The one where the Jets are all about to pop off in anger, but Ice advises them to "keep it cooly cool, boy?" I've been feeling like I am in that scene ALL DAY, mostly because this government shutdown is so crazy and infuriating, but also because I channel my anger through… Read… 10/01/13 1:40pm 10/01/13 1:40pm

One potential casualty of the looming (constitutionally mandated that I use the word "looming" in reference to government shutdown- Article 12, Section 6, HISTORY: LEARN IT) government shutdown isn't the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal employees or even my sanity, after having to listen to the yammering of the… Read… 9/30/13 6:40pm 9/30/13 6:40pm