Democrats and Republicans both prepping for the seemingly inevitable government shutdown.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain had told Think Progress that he would not appoint any Muslims to federal jobs. But it seems even this stalwart may be going soft. Cain now says he’d consider appointing Muslims who made a special pledge not to try to sneak any sharia in on the sly and keep extra special loyal to the Constitution.

Cantor announces: No more emergency measures to fund the government. Okay our cuts or we’re shutting it down.

Breaking out of Wisconsin: It looks like that judge whose restraining order was defied by state Republicans isn’t sitting still for what happened. More shortly.

If you smuggle one of the US military’s unmanned surveillance drones into the US and want to sell it, don’t try to sell it on eBay.

Remember the judge who last week issued a preliminary injunction against Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s anti-union legislation? After Wisconsin Republicans defied that order on Friday, everybody met in court again today. The judge again enjoined any efforts to put the law into effect. And the Governor’s representative again said, who cares?

Andrew Breitbart says he’s “excited” for Shirley Sherrod slander case, claims it’s all about Pigford.

Rachel Maddow goes to town with Evan McMorris Santoro’s Tuesday piece on a right-wing think tank FOIAing university professors’ emails to see what communications they’ve had with Rachel Maddow. Watch it.

This is the manila envelope House GOP freshmen taped to the door of the U.S. Senate this morning:

In it is a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) imploring the Senate to pass its own budget bill, to take the heat off House Republicans. OK, that last part is my editorial comment. But that’s the essence of what’s happening. Benjy Sarlin explains.

Okay, in the words of the immortal Beastie Boys, we are going to fight, for your right, to hear freshman Rep. Sean Duffy say his family is struggling to get by on his $174,000 salary. Yesterday we posted a short clip of Duffy, at a townhall in his district, telling a constituent that his family was “struggling” to get by on his $174,000 annual congressional salary.

Let’s be honest: Duffy is probably in a majority of members of Congress of both parties who feel this way. He’s in a minority of one who in this economic climate had the poor judgment to say it. In any case, the fact that Duffy said it was always secondary for us to the fact that the local Polk County Republican party was trying to prevent anyone from seeing the video after they posted it on their own website.

Then this morning, our video hosting service received a take down notice from the Polk County Republican party trying again to prevent anyone from seeing the video. We believe that it’s wrong for a political party to use copyright to prevent the public from seeing something a member of Congress said in the course of his public duties. (This was a townhall meeting.) Equally important, our legal counsel believes they have no case. So we have now reposted the video on our own site along with a news report on the Polk County GOP’s effort to prevent anyone from seeing the video. See it here.