House Republicans on Friday released their legislation to extend the payroll tax cut, reform and extend unemployment insurance, and delay changes to the Medicare reimbursement rate for doctors.

A new campaign ad makes the startling claim that the new health care law will pay for Viagra for rapists -- and that Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., voted for the measure.

If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:

FOR months now America's pundits have been predicting that next week's mid-terms will be a "wave election", in which a torrent of opposition victories sweeps the incumbent party from power. Recently, however, they have begun to up the rhetorical stakes, talking of floods, tidal waves, tsunamis and, inevitably, the perfect storm. Or as Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster, likes to put it, a hurricane is definitely coming; the only question is whether it will be category 3 or category 5.