The looming federal government shutdown, due to hit this Tuesday if I’m not mistaken, will not be a literal, complete shutdown of the government. Plenty of agencies will keep operating, plenty of officials will keep drawing paychecks, and you’d best believe that plenty of taxes will still be collected. This suggests that some federal functions receive higher priority than others.

I’d like to think we could take the occasion of a shutdown to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the federal government shouldn’t do as much as it does, and that we should eliminate some of those de-prioritized functions, or relegate them to the states.

I’m sure there are some pretty important programs that’ll suffer if a continuing resolution (or, dare I say it, an actual budget) isn’t passed by Tuesday. After all, how else would you make political hay out of the whole thing? We can argue about which programs should have spending priority, but the simple fact that a “shutdown” de-prioritizes certain programs should lead Congress to determine what percentage of federal spending actually shuts down during the “shutdown”– and then cut federal spending by that much. I think it’s reasonable to ask that Congress spend no more than what they consider truly necessary.

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Ugly Bears game today. It ended up as a one-score game (40-32), but it really wasn’t that close throughout. The run defense needs a lot of work; I don’t care if Reggie Bush had the game of his life or not. And Cutler has got to eliminate those reckless, floating, off-his-back-foot throws from his repertoire– even one of those per game can kill you.