It’s getting hard to keep track of the hostage metaphors here, but if I have this right then the latest from Boehner means the House GOP is keeping both hostages — government shutdown and debt limit — but has agreed not to shoot the debt limit in the head for another six weeks.

Press conference following meeting of House Republicans about to begin. Watch.

Indications coming from House Republicans are that they may pause before leaping over the edge and agree to raise the debt ceiling for a few weeks. The White House has indicated it will accept a short-term, no-strings-attached debt ceiling increase, but it’s also getting in another shot at Republicans for going so far down this road. Even Michele Bachmann is now calling default “foolish.”

With former Sen., now Heritage Foundation sachem Jim DeMint’s (R) new open letter to the President over the “temporary slowdown in government”, it’s more and more clear how prescient Josh Green’s profile of DeMint really was. Boehner is just the messenger. DeMint is the guy who’s now running Congress.

Dylan Scott on a little-noticed rules change the House GOP made just before the shutdown started that still has Democrats seething.

Perhaps in the tradition of Nate Silver and other anchors dragging down the New York Times, Joe Scarborough says one of the Times public editors told him that Krugman’s column’s is their “biggest nightmare.”

The Republican Party now has the lowest favorability rating recorded by Gallup since the pollster began tracking that number in 1992.

We’re hosting a live chat at TPMPrime (sub. req.) at 4:30 p.m. ET with Anthony Townsend, the author of “SMART CITIES: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for a New Utopia.” He will be discussing the intersection of politics and technology, and issues related to urban planning, civic engagement, and disaster preparedness. Please join in.

Koch Industries: Don’t blame us for the government shutdown!

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) says that at worst default will be a “managed catastrophe.”