The New Republic

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[Update, 10:30 p.m.: House leadership just announced there will be no vote tonight.] Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... It's 9:30 p.m., about four hours after House Republican leaders reportedly planned to hold a vote on Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling plan. And the vote hasn't taken place yet.  READ MORE >>

Jay Newton-Small handicaps some possibilities for the debt ceiling standoff. She ends on this persuasively pessimistic note: With so few viable options, it’s not hard to imagine that the deadline is missed and the ensuing panic forces Congress to enact some combination of 1-4. Or they go right up to the brink and some combination of 1-4 happens. As Doc Brown from Back to the Future said, “Road? Where we’re going there are no roads.” READ MORE >>

Numerous hazy, ill-defined descriptions of a possible deficit deal have been floating around this afternoon. All parties have denied that they've struck an agreement. It's possible they have a tentative deal they've agreed to float to their caucuses, and it's also possible that somebody is leaking something short of a full deal in order to gin up a backlash. READ MORE >>

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Jay Newton-Small interviews Mitch McConnell, who invokes the grand bargain on the deficit but maintains his no-new-taxes stance: TIME: Deficit reduction in the past has always required both sides to make sacrifices and then jump together. What are you willing to give up? READ MORE >>

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The politics of health care reform have looked shaky for the last twenty-four hours. But Time's Jay Newton-Small has a message for the Democrats: "This is likely to be as bad as it's going to get." She explains: READ MORE >>

Pointing out the hypocrisy of Republican positions on procedural fairness is getting tiresome, I know. But I can't let this one pass. From Jay Newton-Small at Time: READ MORE >>