Speaker John Boehner is in charge of the least popular governmental body in America. It isn’t a particularly easy job, and in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published late yesterday, he tells Peggy Noonan what it’s like to be both “Dean of Students” and “Spouse,” to try to prevent scandals before they become scandals, and how the senior members of Congress are a much bigger problem than the Tea Party freshmen.

On Wednesday, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien invited Congressmen Chris Van Hollen (D – MD) and Tom Price (R – GA) onto the show to discuss the vote on whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

News officially broke today that the “super committee” of six Democrats and six Republicans drafted to come up with a mutually agreed upon set of deficit-cutting compromises has failed in their mission. President Obama made a statement earlier today, marking the occasion in a rather solemn though not disastrous tone before blaming the Congress for their inability to work together to benefit the country. Obama focused primarily on the automatic spending cuts that will be triggered after the failure to come to an agreement, promising to veto any GOP efforts to block them.

The Congressional Super-Committee which rose out of last summer’s debt deadlock in Congress has a deadline approaching, and it appears nowhere near cutting a budget deal with hours to the deadline. With that in mind, both the Democratic and Republican chairs of the committee– Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, respectively–took to the Sunday talk show circuit to explain their impending failure, with Sen. Murray blaming Republicans for not having a mentality of “shared sacrifice” while Rep. Hensarling argued Democrats wanted to raise taxes exorbitantly.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi faced a fair bit of criticism today while addressing her constituents during a town hall meeting in Oakland, California. The crowd demonstrated its disapproval of Pelosi’s vote in the debt ceiling deal by shouting “Sell out!” and repeatedly asking her to explain why she voted in favor of something she had just admitted she “did not like at all.”

The highlight (?) of the meeting was, without a doubt, the irate shouts of “You voted for that Satan sandwich!” God, the heartburn.

Fox Business News has bought ads on Time Warner Cable that directly criticize CNBC’s lacking coverage of the U.S. credit downgrade over a week ago.

Coming off her victory in the Iowa straw poll, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann stopped by every Sunday news show to further expand her views and past statements. On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace offered her a hypothetical scenario where she wins the presidency and the Republicans take the majority in the Senate, but she would not have a veto-proof majority in both houses. In that circumstance, would President Bachmann be willing to work with Democrats and find ground to compromise?

Following last night’s heated Republican debate, GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann chatted with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, taking some time to directly address campaign rival Tim Pawlenty‘s claim that she reminds him of President Barack Obama (if you’re just joining us after a lengthy sojourn on another planet: this was neither meant nor taken as a compliment), as well as his attacks on her record of accomplishments.

As most of the anti-Tea Party rhetoric from the left came after Congress went into recess, many of the body’s Tea Party sympathizers have mostly kept quiet. Tonight, Republican Sen. Rand Paul finally got a chance to respond to the idea that it was his movement that caused the chaos current in the stock market, prompted by the national credit downgrade. “It’s really ludicrous on the face of it,” he told Sean Hannity, arguing that blaming “a minority of a minority party” for the debt was “sort of like blaming the fireman when he comes over to put out the fire.”

Congress has been out of session for little more than a week, but it’s never too early for boisterous Town Hall meetings where constituents get a chance to lash out at their representatives for their perceived incompetence. First up this year is Sen. John McCain, who confronted an enraged (but polite) Tea Party member who demanded an apology for the Senator having mocked her movement on the Senate floor during the debt debate. “I am not sorry for what I said,” the Senator replied dryly.

It seems no one is fully satisfied with the deal that last month’s debt crisis finally carved out of Congress, with polls showing Americans feel Congress behaved like “spoiled children” and the deal with nothing short of “disgusting.” On tonight’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart took a closer look at the congressional “supercommittee” that is supposed to navigate the country out of this mess, and found the comic book heroes at least marginally underwhelming.

With the debt ceiling talk finally behind the nation, it’s time to focus once again on the fledgling economy and generating jobs once more takes the fore. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly turned his attention to the stock market’s decline, and while he lay the majority of the blame on the feet of the Obama administration, argued that extremists in Congress on the left and the right are causing much of the investor skepticism hurting the economy.

The political world is still reeling from the intense Congressional debate that pushed America to the brink of default, and trying to find just who to blame to make sure it doesn’t happen again. On last night’s The Big Picture, Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher took on the subject with host Thom Hartmann, arguing that the Democrats were “cute” in their naivete and could never pull off such a stunt because, with Republicans, “there’s nothing you can threaten them with.”

President Obama yesterday signed into law the controversial debt bill that not only raised the debt ceiling, but also seemed to have done political damage to both the White House and Democrats who appeared to have done less compromising, and more capitulating to an obstinate Tea Party-lead congressional GOP caucus. How bad was the final deal? Well even fake newsman Stephen Colbert has piled on to the liberal side of the aisle, and not in the amplified absurd of hyperbole of his “character” but in a way that seems to reveal that he really thinks the Dems got screwed…at both ends.

Pitting newly minted host Al Sharpton against longtime conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan was bound to generate a potent shouting match, no matter what the topic. But given Buchanan’s record of questionable comments, it’s hard not to find something off-color about his debate with Sharpton today, where, discussing the debt, he argues that “your boy,” President Obama, was “whipped” by Sen. Mitch McConnell, and adds a “briar patch” reference for good measure.

While the Tea Party is by and large considered right wing, that doesn’t mean it gets along with most Republicans, though tonight one of those blacklisted GOPers sent love to a group largely distrustful of him. On tonight’s John King USA, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told host John King that, no matter how much they may dislike him, “I love them” for helping them regain a sizable contingent in Congress.

President Obama took to the White House lawn today and addressed the press shortly after the recent bill had been passed that raised the debt ceiling, and aimed to pivot the focused conversation to “a more balanced approach” to the fall season. The president’s response was muted in tone, downplaying any celebratory tone, and immediately presented the political agenda for next few months: lowering taxes for the lower and middle class and putting more revenue burden on the wealthy.

Now that both sides in the recent debt crisis debate have come to agreement on raising the debt ceiling, both the political and chattering class have rushed out to assess winners and losers in this compromised deal. And simply judging by the confident rhetoric espoused by many on the right, it appears that the GOP seems happier than the Democrats with the final result. Last night, Stephen Colbert noted that the GOP may have won small victory before adding “but this could have been so much more victoryer!” Colbert then explained the debt negotiations and budget deal with a Billy Goats Gruff that even kids could understand.

Fareed Zakaria is quickly building a reputation for sharing frank and candid opinions on political factions with whom he holds in particularly low esteem. Take for example last night’s conversation he had with AC360 host Anderson Cooper regarding House GOP members sympathetic to the Tea Party movement, who Zakaria feels were doing no less than taking the nation hostage over an inflexibility on raising the federal debt ceiling.

Sarah Palin was on autopilot tonight. In a strange twist of events rarely seen since 2008, Palin went on the air with On the Record host Greta Van Susteren and went through the motions– without a hitch, without a spark, without making a single unique point. After calling Vice President Joe Biden‘s classification of the Tea Party as terrorists “appalling,” she noted that it should be a surprise to no one that Tea Party Congressmen “were going to fulfill their promises.”

While most anyone on the either extreme of the political spectrum has expressed dismay at the final debt deal that has come out of the current crisis, the fact that the deal includes no tax hikes is great news to conservatives who were otherwise concerned about the deal. Arguing that, without the Tea Party victories of 2010, Congress would not have had the discussion it did, Eric Bolling took the time on The Five today to gift the Tea Party with a giant symbol of his appreciation: a tea bag.

After weeks and weeks of toil, doomsday scenarios and failed bills, the compromise agreed to this weekend between legislative Democrats and Republicans and the White House has finally passed the lower chamber of Congress by a simple majority. It goes on to the Senate tomorrow, where it is also expected to pass. The occasion was marked by a moving return to the House floor: that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who had been absent since the tragic shooting that almost claimed her life in Tucson.

At Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney fielded a lot of questions about how, exactly, the new debt ceiling deal constitutes a “compromise.” As CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell pointed out, Democrats “got nothing.”

Carney pointed to the measure’s “Super Congress” committee as an opportunity to take a second crack at a balanced approach, and to the trigger provisions as an incentive for Congress to reach such a deal. I asked Carney if it was realistic to think that Tea Party congressmen would vote for revenue increases, even in the face of defense cuts.

Assuming Congress passes the “less than satisfying” debt ceiling measure that puts an end to the Tea Party-invented default crisis, this week will mark the Dawn of Doomsday Politicsâ„¢, an era in which all bets are off, and the immolation of our way of life has become a political bargaining chip. At Monday’s White House briefing, I asked Press Secretary Jay Carney why the President even allowed this conversation to happen in the first place, and how he might deal with the default threat when it comes up again, in his second term.

The House of Representatives debate was interrupted this afternoon by a large group of protesters who seemed very unhappy with the weekend agreement on raising the debt ceiling. Reports are still coming in, but it appears that roughly twenty or so protestors were arrested by Capitol police. While being led away, they were heard to chant “Hey Boehner, get a clue, it’s about revenue.” It rhymes.