This is Columbus Day, a federal holiday, so we’ll be blogging a bit Lite today unless news developments dictate otherwise. If it’s just another day of Republican efforts to obtain cover for retreat on a failed hostage-taking effort, it probably won’t take twelve posts to explain that.

Here’s the Vermont band Grace Potter & the Nocturnals with “Mr. Columbus.”

Independent since 1969.

The Washington Monthly is nonprofit and reader-supported. Your tax-deductible gift pays for the reporting you just read.

Ed Kilgore, a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, is a columnist for New York.