BRIT HUME: Veteran political observers on both the left and right are still trying to figure out what the House Tea Party caucus and its Senate pied piper Ted Cruz were thinking when they insisted on using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. It was a hopeless strategy that has not only failed in its stated goal, but helped s

DAVID BRODY: Do you believe the media, or if not so much the media, maybe writ large the much larger population, has some sort of bias against whether it be a strong conservative evangelical, maybe a strong Catholic, whatever it happens to be? People of faith, it just seems like if you wear it on your sleeve too much, you can get bit to a degree.

Guns right advocate Alan Gottlieb on the prospect of centering "Guns Save Lives Day" around the anniversary of the Newtown mass shootings. After criticism, the event will now be held one day after the anniversary of the Newtown shooting.

"I hope they're working day and night to get this done and when they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people who were in charge of making sure this thing was supposed to work," former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

GEORGE WILL: I disagree with Charles, I think that the Republicans are coming out of this very well. The president, who said, 'I never drew a red line regarding chemical weapons,' when we saw him do it, the president who said the sequester was not my idea, when Bob Woodward's meticulous reporting demonstrates it was, the president who said I want a

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been trying to set up an account on the healthcare.gov website for two weeks. "I put in my user name and password and it didn't recognize it," she said. "Error messages. Page not found. System down."

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: When the poll came out from the Wall Street Journal at the end of last week, it was a bombshell, and they're headed for the exits now. The concessions that are supposed -- incidentally, Mitch McConnell, who is negotiating this, I'm not blaming him at all, he has been handed a hand with no cards, so whatever he is able to pull o

SEAN HANNITY: You've got tea party activists all over the place in this country saying stand on your principles. Here's the bottom line, every single Republican -- I can't think of one that didn't -- ran to repeal health care. They kept -- we keep hearing there are strategic differences with Ted Cruz, Rand [Paul] and Marco [Rubio] and [Mike] Lee, H

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CA): I never questioned, never questioned the fact that Republicans, Democrats and independents love this country. Love this country. I never questioned it. But I have to say, when you start acting like you're committing domestic abuse, you've got a problem. "I love you dear, but you know, I'm shutting down your entire governm

MARC FABER: There is no safe haven. Bank deposits are not safe, which used to be safe. Money in treasury bills is not 100% safe because there is inflation in the system and you hardly get any interest. Bonds are not very safe anymore because eventually interest rates will go up. Equities in the US are relatively expensive by any valuation metrics y

EZRA KLEIN: The way this IT is going on is a disaster, I really don't think people should soft-pedal what a bad launch this has been. They've done a terrible job on this website. We're a couple weeks in now, and people can’t sign up, people have tried 20, 30, 40 times. It’s one thing for that to be true the first three or four days, it’s ano

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think that there's been some progress on the Senate side with Republicans recognizing it's not tenable, it's not smart, it's not good for the American people to let America default. There's been some progress in recognizing that we're not going to be able to bridge the differences between the parties all at once. And so it doesn'

MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA-TV) - Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.

President Obama urges New Jerseyans to vote for Cory Booker in Wednesday's special Senate election. "Cory Booker has spent his entire life bringing people with different perspectives together, regardless of party, to take on tough challenges," Obama said. "Take it from me: Now more than ever before, that's the kind of leader we need in the Senat

Sarah Palin spoke at a campaign rally for New Jersey Republican Senate candidate Steve Lonegan on Saturday.

PAUL GIGOT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: There's a lot of economic nonsense that's creeping into the right as they get to be so disoriented as part of this debate and focus only on something they can't achieve immediately, which is the repeal of Obamacare. They miss other opportunities and they even creep in some bad economic concepts.