Welcome to Chicago, Texas! Wait, huh?

Oh, the entertaining perils of using stock photography...

Texas Lieutenant Governor candidate Dan Patrick launched yet another little microsite attacking his Republican primary opponents, and here's a screenshot of the page:

Sebelius offers "dead parrot" defense of Obamacare website

How Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius still has her job is beyond me.

At today's Congressional hearing, Sebelius testified, "The website never crashed." Unfortunately for her, the website had actually crashed just a few minutes before the hearing began, and remained down for much of her testimony, and CNN's split screen display was just priceless:

New video series from RNC highlights problems with Obamacare website

The RNC rolled out a new website and a series of short videos highlighting the many problems with the launch of the Obamacare website and other annoyances with the new health care law.

The videos parody the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads and are posted at obamacarecosts.org. They are also encouraging use of a hashtag, #ImObamacare.

Here's my favorite of the videos:

Questions raised about tonight's straw poll in Harris County

Who's got the short straw? Depends
 on who's picking out the straws.

Coming up tonight: a "Take Back Harris County" rally in Houston, featuring many of the Republican candidates for statewide office as "special guests" and a straw poll.

I always find straw polls to be very interesting political games. I've said many times before that if you give me at least a week's notice and an adequate budget, that I can buy almost any straw poll in the country.

There are several important tricks to understanding straw polls:

Ouch: Rep. Bill Young's widow bans Charlie Crist from her husband's funeral

Not welcome.

You know you're a shameless, self-serving political backstabber when...

...your behavior is so unacceptable you get publicly banned from a funeral.

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that  Beverly Young, the widow of Representative C.W. "Bill" Young, who passed away last Friday, sent an email to Florida's former Republican Governor turned Democrat TV huckster, warning him that he was not welcome at the Congressman's funeral this Thursday:

Guest post: Progressivism - The Mentality of "More"

Here is a guest column submitted by my friend Jeff Semon, who ran for Congress last year in Massachusetts' Fifth District. Jeff is the Director of Communications for the Massachusetts Federation of Young Republicans, and you can follow him on Twitter at @JeffSemonMA.

Bipartisan agreement: Alan Grayson is a loudmouth nut

As someone who had the unpleasant experience of having Alan Grayson as my Congresscritter for two years, this story did not surprise me at all:

Hooray for BOTH of my Senators!

So, the shutdown's over...at least this particular fight is over. We'll probably be right back here in a few months because they only managed a short agreement, but whatever. This image sums up what I, and I think many Americans, are thinking:

Hat tip: Twitchy

Anyway, in the various conservative corners of the internet, a lot of the most impassioned discussion has focused on the roles of certain Republican members of Congress and whether they were "sellouts," "unrealistic," "radical," "RINOs" or a million other unflattering descriptions. Far too much of this chatter was not only petty, it was unproductive or even destructive.

My friend Kathleen McKinley has written a very thoughtful piece for the Houston Chronicle today, focusing on the two Senators from the great state of Texas:

Starbucks awkwardly takes sides in the #shutdown

I woke up this morning and found this email in my inbox from Starbucks, asking me to sign the "Come Together" petition:

Justice Scalia: "A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional"

For my fellow Federalist Society members and legal scholars, here's a treat: a very long and detailed interview with United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in New York Magazine.

In Conversation: Antonin Scalia

Scalia is at his intellectually witty best in the interview, covering a wide variety of political, legal, religious, and cultural topics. 

Some highlights:

NBC misses half the story in long-winded attempt to pin blame for shutdown on GOP

Yeah, yeah, keep saying there's no liberal media bias. 

Explain this little gem from NBC News today about who has the power to end the government shutdown:

Senator John Cornyn: Obama's shutdown strategy is to "maximize the pain" of the American people

Cornyn from his days on the
Texas Supreme Court

Last night, Texas Senator John Cornyn held a conference call with conservative bloggers and journalists. As we enter Day 2 of the government shutdown, his comments from just a few hours ago are becoming even more relevant as the day goes on. Thought I'd share some of my notes from the call with you.

#Shutdown doesn't stop WWII veterans from visiting their memorial [UPDATED]

Visiting WWII veterans were confronted with
barricades at the WWII Memorial...but not for long.

There's plenty of room for debate on the merits of this government shutdown, but I'm glad to see that reasonable people are agreeing that our active duty military and veterans shouldn't be harmed. The House unanimously passed a bill to protect military pay that President Obama signed yesterday, Veterans Administration health care functions will continue, among other measures.

Then there's this delightful story...

A group of WWII veterans from Mississippi visiting the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. as part of an Honor Flight trip decided they were going to visit their memorial, government shutdown or no. From the Twitter feed of Stars and Stripes reporter Leo Shane: