I stayed up for a while last night to watch some ping pong – bills being passed by the House only to be rejected by the Senate. I didn’t last long – because it was obvious this was going nowhere. The shutdown of the federal government was on.
It sounded like there was a deal in the making, with moderate Republicans willing to vote in favor of a clean CR. Apparently, Speaker Boehner killed that. Robert Costa’s twitter feed was a tremendous source of information of what was happening in the Republican v. Republican fight. This one was telling:
Those who try to blame this on both parties have truly not been paying attention. (Count Gov. Bob McDonnell and lot of CSPAN callers among them.) This is an intra-party fight. Unfortunately, the American people – regardless of party – are the football.
How long this shut down will last is anybody’s guess. It could very well extend to the debt ceiling fight, coming in a couple of weeks.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
The annoying thing is, when a shutdown comes, it’s the CONSTITUTIONAL stuff that gets hammered, but the unconstitutional “mandatory” spending continues unabated.