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For all its downsides, the budget stalemate has helped shed light on a pressing question -- which parts of the government can Americans live without? The partial government shutdown effectively has forced every agency in Washington to answer that question. Ahead of the budget deadline, agency heads were ordered to figure out how many employees would be deemed "essential" in case of a partial shutdown. The results (which can be viewed here) give a glimpse into how important, or not, dozens of federal agencies and departments are to Americans' everyday lives.

President Barack Obama laid the blame for the U.S. government's partial shutdown at the feet of House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Thursday...With 800,000 federal government employees forced into taking leave, some agencies have almost entirely shuttered, including NASA, the Commerce Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

NEW YORK POST — Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government’s partial shutdown. The site overlooking the D-Day invasion beaches is one of 24 U.S. military cemeteries overseas that have closed to visitors since Monday. Ten more cemeteries in in France, as well as others in various European countries as well as Mexico, Panama, Tunisia and the Philippines, will remain closed for the duration of the shutdown.

Early Thursday morning, Potomac Research Group analyst Greg Valliere predicted that if the debt-ceiling deadline grew closer, President Barack Obama would play his "trump card" in the debate. He would remind seniors that if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, seniors wouldn't get their Social Security checks. "GOP strategists like Karl Rove surely know that it's just a matter of time before President Obama throws a game-changer — warning senior citizens that their Social Security checks won't be mailed because of John Boehner," Valliere wrote in a note to clients.

President Barack Obama went on a rhetorical offensive against House Republicans on the third day of the federal government shutdown, telling a crowd in Maryland Thursday that there's only one party at fault and one remedy. "There are enough Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives today that if the speaker of the House, John Boehner, simply let the bill get on the floor for an up or down vote, every congressman could vote their conscience, the shutdown would end today," Obama said in a speech in Rockville, Maryland. "The only thing that is keeping the government shut down,...

At Marion Park on Capitol Hill, two fence gates were chained closed, but one was not, and a group of children played inside. At the Korean War Veterans Memorial, on the Mall, the entrance was blocked with barricades, but visitors just walked around the barriers and entered. At the closed-off National World War II Memorial, two days of assaults by veterans prompted the National Park Service to announce that they had the legal right to be there and would not be barred in the future. Across federal Washington on Wednesday, the government shutdown was leaking badly — partly as a...

Conservative talk radio Mark Levin said Wednesday if the Obama administration lays "one damn hand" on any World War II veteran trying to see their memorial that he would bring "half a million people" to it. The Obama administration closed the World War II Memorial as part of the government shutdown and even threatened veterans on Honor Flights with potential arrests if they went past what is being called "Barrycades." "I want to say this loud and clear to the people on Capitol Hill who are listening, to this administration. You lay one damn hand on one of those World...

Just announced....

<p>President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders to the White House on the second day of a partial government shutdown that has furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers and closed military cemeteries as far away as France. Republican leaders welcomed the Wednesday afternoon meeting but questioned whether Democrats were ready to deal.</p>