The shutdown, which entered its 31st day Monday, overshadows every other news story in the United States right now. As the decades roll on, however, this month will be much more likely to be remembered for a spectacular scientific and technical milestone: the landing, on the far side of the moon, of a lunar lander and rover named after a Chinese moon goddess and her pet rabbit.

If and when the government’s 25-percent shutdown reaches a pain level high enough to spur real action to end it, Georgia, starting at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and radiating outward, will be one of the states feeling it most.

What Ralph McGill so clearly described 60 years ago as “the crop of things sown” is coming in again right before a big election, so the human tendency is to focus on how the mayhem of the last week will affect the upcoming vote. That, sadly, is the least of it.

t’s extremely rare for a politician to take a shot at a candidate in a race farther down the ballot, much less call on one to resign. But this is a year of lateral moves and unconventional parries.

The analysis of how decorum has broken down in the U.S. Supreme Court nominating process usually begins with Robert Bork and moves through Clarence Thomas to the present, sorry state of events. A 1994 Alabama race run by Karl Rove deserves more attention, because the venom which has been injected into judicial politics starts at the state level.