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Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

President Obama signaled Saturday that he wouldn't accept the Republicans' offer for a short-term increase in the nation's debt limit. "It wouldn’t be wise, as some suggest, to just kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," Obama said in his weekly address. "Because damage to America’s sterling credit rating wouldn’t just cause global markets to go haywire; it would become more expensive for everyone in America to borrow money. Students paying for college. Newlyweds buying a home," he said....

What to make of all the polls on the government shutdown? You know, the ones that say that, to varying degrees, congressional Republicans are being blamed more than Democrats and Barack Obama. Let me give a roundabout answer, based on a theory that people sometimes try to send messages through their responses to poll questions. I developed this theory after watching British political polls since the 1960s. For the large majority of that time -- the major exception was the first eight years of Tony Blair's prime ministership -- voters have given negative job ratings to the governments of the...

A sharp reader caught a statistical problem with that much-cited NBC/WSJ poll that shows Republicans are getting whooped in the shutdown: Tampa @S1CT @texasbryanp In today's NBC/WSJ poll, 1 in 5 respondents work for govt.  Only 8% of pop works for govt.  See last page. 8:12 - 10 Oct 2013 It’s true. Here is the complete poll with the sample, the questions, etc. On the very last page we get the breakdown of where the 800 respondents work. The wording of the question is broad enough to sweep in spouses of government workers and other situations in which the respondent...

"Part of the atmosphere that allowed this shutdown to take place was this attitude that these folks aren’t providing important services and value to our country and they’re dead wrong about that," Obama said. "Those politicians who are always complaining about federal workers ... I guess they’re doing it for political reasons." He said he has seen the impact of the shutdown firsthand -- seeing younger staff get furloughed and struggle day in and day out. "There are people who are being impacted every day, and in the D.C. metro region that much more," Obama said. "I’ve got young staff...

Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government “shutdowns” to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off the orange traffic cones and “Barrycades.” Enough is enough. The movement started with waves of World War II veterans who flew to D.C. last week as part of the Honor Flight Network. (The nonprofit group brings our surviving heroes to visit the memorials that honor their service and sacrifice.) The vets and volunteers breached the fences last week,...

This is unbelievable. The Obama administration has shut down the Amber Alert website because of the government shutdown and it now renders this message when you attempt to access it: I’m sure you care about your lost child but Obama doesn’t – at least not while he’s trying to ‘win’ the government shutdown. I understand from twitter that Amber alerts are state level programs with a federal website. Not real sure how all that works but it just seems unfathomable that this website wouldn’t qualify under ‘essential’, especially when most of the government is still operating

Everyone knows the phrase "government shutdown" doesn't mean the entire U.S. government is shut down. So in a partial government shutdown, like the one underway at the moment, how much of the government is actually shut down, and how much is not? One way to measure that is in how much money the government spends. In a conversation Thursday, a Republican member of Congress mentioned that the military pay act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama at the beginning of the shutdown, is actually a huge percentage of the government's discretionary spending in any given year. And that...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday blasted Congressional Republicans for their “wrong-headed” budget brinksmanship he said led to a partial government shutdown, while maintaining that city services are still immune to the impasse in Washington. “It’s time for the Republican leaders in Congress to step up, provide leadership and tell a small minority in their party to stop trying to hold the country hostage to their ideology,” Emanuel told reporters at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday. As the first federal shutdown in nearly 18 years entered its second day, Emanuel said city services are still unaffected by the shutdown,...

(CNN) -- The federal government shutdown is a virtually unprecedented move by a political minority committed to rolling back one of the most significant legislative achievements in recent American history. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was passed by two houses of Congress after 14 months of debate. Opponents then challenged the law's constitutionality and lost that battle in the Supreme Court of the United States. [Snip] Apparently the democratic processes by which Americans make choices and govern themselves are not acceptable to extremists in the House of Representatives who seek to halt government or have their way. They would...

The federal government shutdown could be hazardous to the health of all Americans, according to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. The Centers for Disease Control, which Harkin calls the world’s premiere public health agency, is closed. Less than two weeks ago, Harkin says the CDC identified frozen berries from the nation of Turkey as the cause of hundreds of people in several states being sickened by hepatitis-A. “The CDC detective epidemiological team went out, they recalled all this food and they stopped it before it spread any further,” Harkin says. “That team is at home now. They’re not working. What if...

A federal government shutdown will temporarily cut off pay of thousands of Uncle Sam’s workers, but for those considered “excepted employees,” there could be a nice salary bump thanks to rules allowing overtime, compensatory time and other benefits provided to those the administration feels too important to furlough. In advance of the potential shutdown, the Office of Personnel Management distributed a 30-page “Guidance for Shutdown Furloughs” that spells out who will get what, if anything, if President Obama and House Republicans can't negotiate a break in the budget stalemate by Monday night, the end of the fiscal year. Most workers...

Most Chicagoans won't notice a short-term federal government shutdown, but the effects could start to be felt by some if the stalemate lingers a few weeks, officials from Springfield to City Hall to college campuses indicated Monday. That's because most agencies can get by for a few weeks without federal dollars by tapping into reserves. [Snip] Cook County hospitals still will accept patients, college students will get financial aid and the state won't stop processing unemployment checks or child support payments. [Snip] Here's a look at some of the potential effects after Congress failed to reach an agreement before Tuesday's...

House Republican leaders will seek a conference committee with Senate Democrats in a last-ditch effort to find a compromise on a short-term spending bill, a GOP aide confirmed late Monday night. The GOP proposal to meet comes after a days of sending bills back and forth to each other with no effect. The House has sent the Senate proposals to undermine ObamaCare, while the Senate continues to insist on a spending resolution that doesn't touch ObamaCare. A conference committee would give a members of both chambers to meet face to face to decide how to move forward on a spending...