Boehner does not bend to the will of his Kamikaze Caucus because he is an evil man. He does so because he is a weak man. To borrow a line from Theodore Roosevelt, I could carve a better man out of a banana.

There is a price to be paid for all this. Even if the immediate problems are somehow solved and a government default avoided — for now — the scab has been torn off our political wounds.

This weekend, racism came out of the closet. (Which assumes it has ever been in the closet.)

Protesters marched through the streets of Washington on Sunday with a Confederate flag and then a protester lounged against the White House fence with one. Displaying the Confederate flag in front of a home occupied by a black family was meant to send a particular, and particularly repellent, message.