I realize that the title of this post suggests that I will be keeping a running log of what the NYTimes is calling John Boehner’s Shutdown, but that’s misleading. There is just too much coverage in the mainstream media of the government shutdown that began today, and frankly, most of what I read is overwhelmingly depressing.

So today I’m going to post a couple of links to articles that you should think about.

The first one is an Op-Ed piece that looks at the American economic picture. A number of you have commented on the article about the shrinking middle class and the consensus seems to be that the phenomenon is the result of market forces and that there isn’t much the government can do. This piece (along with this one) may make you think a little differently.

The second article you should look at is this piece in Salon (sorry about the noisy ads  I don’t usually read Salon, but it showed up in my Twitter feed, so there you are). Since you are all getting more and more familiar with the constitution, I’d be interested to hear what you think of his arguments about how the constitution is to blame for the shutdown. Do you think that James Madison would agree?