Imagine if Montgomery and Helderman's editor had demanded that they deliberately slant a story to benefit an advertiser, and they and the rest of the reporting staff responded by walking out and shutting down the paper in protest. Would it be accurate to say that Washington Post reporters picked a fight?

As budget negotiations between Democrats and Republicans stall, the possibility of a government shutdown on March 4 rapidly increases.

Polls indicate that Americans would blame both Obama and Republicans if the government shuts down in two weeks.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget is a big story in Congress, even though it barely made it through the House Budget Committee, will take a battle to pass on the House floor and has zero chance of being embraced as is, or in any facsimile, in the Senate. So why is it so big?

On the disaster relief front, Cantor's office released a study by the majority staff of the House Appropriations Committee saying that offsets on disaster relief are actually commonplace, if not routine. I dug into their examples a bit, albeit with my limited expertise on what really goes down on the process for supplemental appropriations, and found the examples they used shaky at best.

There is a great deal to remember this week, the one year anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. Few events in recent history have combined to such an intense degree natural disaster, technological failure, humanitarian relief, and government scrutiny. 

There’s good reason to believe the relationship between Romney and the Tea Party-driven congressional Republicans will be exceptional only in the severity of its uneasiness. This is not an example of passionate matrimony, but a mere wedding of convenience—and it’s safe to say the honeymoon won’t last long.

For all the drama surrounding the narrowly averted government shutdown, this was just the warm-up round. The real budget fight begins in a few weeks, when Congress must take up legislation to raise the federal debt limit.