Photo of the Day

There's a happy ending to the story of a dog, found alive in the rubble after a massive tornado devastated Moore, Oklahoma: she's been reunited with her owner.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Across-the-board budget cuts have created Furlough Friday in Washington and elsewhere, as the one-day closing of four federal agencies forced an unpaid day off for 115,000 workers. Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Internal Revenue Service and the Office of Management and Budget stayed home on Friday. The furlough affects about 5 percent of the federal workforce, according to Cory Bythrow, communications director at the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing government workers. ...

Henny Youngman, the late borscht belt comedian, told hundreds of politically incorrect jokes. One of them was his response when asked, “How’s your wife?” “Compared to what?” he’d say.

Good for your body; terrible for the planet

For two days John McCain and Ted Cruz have been fighting on the Senate floor over the rules for negotiating a budget, but, like so many fights, it's also about so much more. Cruz is being annoying about the budget, but worse, he just doesn't get the Senate. 

At first I thought the IRS scandal was leaked to distract from the Benghazi scandal. But that didn't make sense because the IRS scandal is a more obvious abuse of power than the White House lying about the murder of four Americans in Libya.Before I had resolved which scandal was distracting from which, we found out the Department of Justice was spying on The Associated Press -- not to protect national security, but to prevent the AP from scooping the White House. Then, this week, it broke that the Department of Justice was also spying on Fox News for reasons that remain unexplained. ...