The Dave Ross Commentary

Of course - there are many reasons to sleep. It's warm and cozy, it doesn't involve working, many times there's a really attractive friend within reach. But this has to be the most persuasive reason yet.

The House of Representatives, after 16 days in a strange and colorful land, finally discovered that it could have returned to reality whenever it wanted to.

Congress put on quite a show Tuesday Tea Party members got the Speaker of the House to accept one of their key demands for reopening the government: requiring Congress and their staff to give up the employer contribution to their health care plans.

This whole shutdown was about people who felt forced into Obamacare. And yet, there has always been an exemption for anyone who wants it.

Another day closer to who knows what and still not grand bargain. Not even a teensy weensy bargain. But the protests at the closed WWII memorial in Washington escalated over the weekend.

Are you listening? There's that familiar bell. I'm starting to think of it as more like a fire alarm.

The most extraordinary development in the big federal budget showdown - was that the original reason for the whole thing evaporated.

There is a mathematical formula created by a professor at the University of Connecticut which appears to be predicting a huge social shift and which may explain why we're in the shutdown and debt ceiling crisis.

One of the things we're learning about our House and Senate during this shutdown is that certain things can't even be voted on!

Still no progress on the shutdown -- but FINALLY, science has come up with the reason this is happening.

SO of course today's subject is the government SHUTDOWN. Which is one of the strangest shutdowns we've ever seen. Because as soon as it started, the very people who allowed the government to close down started passing bills to OPEN IT BACK UP.

I can't remember anything like it. Members of the House of Representatives, who in their other lives are medical doctors, appeared before reporters dressed in their lab coats, and pleaded with the Senate to pass a bill that would restore funding for the National Institutes of Health.

The president called the leaders of Congress to the White House to see if the two sides could agree on ending the government shutdown.

Members of Congress defy their own shutdown!

Couldn't find that word anywhere in the dictionary. But being that they refused to touch a thing the Senate sent back, House of Refusentatives fits nicely, I think.