The conventional wisdom about government shutdowns is that they always fail. Senate Democrats probably assumed as much when they shut down the government. Perhaps they thought they were giving partisan activists something to root for, even fleetingly, before eventually caving.
That was a reasonable, if somewhat cynical, calculation.

Keeping up with national politics this year hasn’t been easy. Even amid a government shutdown, so much is happening in Washington, at such a rapid clip and such a high pitch, that a browser of The New York Times’ homepage could be forgiven for giving up and clicking straight through to Spelling Bee.

Aphids toiled brittle stems as we met the dike
to rob snakehead buds of their fruit. I gathered
persimmons, podgy maypops. You puckered, sucked seeds,
tannins, the half-ripe pulp half-glossy, sicksweet.
Down lying in crowds of dry grasses, your warm legs pile
beads of sweat. Even our silken fruits offer their wet
to afternoon sky. Oh darling, this impartial land
has grown strange in our time and from some rocky stasis
blossomed, praising the mercury toward higher altars.

Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has built a career documenting what he calls “altered landscapes”—tangled highway overpasses, sprawling oil refineries, mountainsides pockmarked by human exploitation. In 1999, he visited a tire-disposal site outside Modesto, California. It was surreal, he told me, almost sublime.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.
My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.