A congressional staff member sent us this snapshot from outside Rep. Sam Graves' (R - Mo.) office, taken around 10:15 p.m. as Congress wrapped up the final budget compromise. Note that we are not—absolutely not!—implying that Republican staffers were drunk during the up-to-the-wire negotiations! Just reckless and crazy and dangerously ignorant. Okay, and maybe a little drunk. Here's the full-sized photo; we've got an email with with Rep. Graves' office and will let you know if we hear back. (Hey! At least they're recycling, right?)

With just an hour to go before a midnight deadline, Democrats and Republicans reached a last-minute budget compromise tonight, averting a government shutdown that would have brought Washington to a standstill and furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal employees. The deal—which involves $39 billion in cuts but does not include a Republican provision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood—isn't final: congressional leaders now have five days to iron out the formal details. Crisis averted—for now! [NYT, CNN]

When the FCC approved its net neutrality rules earlier this year, it pissed off just about everyone. The House of Representatives were definitely not thrilled: A bill was passed today that would strike down the FCC's net neutrality rules.

Here's Maryland Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards quoting the White Stripes song "Effect and Cause" at length on the House floor. The lyrical content urges Republicans to prevent a painful government shutdown for which they would take the blame. We don't know! She's reading way too fast for a Friday afternoon. "La la la la Republicans are mean la la la splat" approximates it close enough.

The city of Washington D.C. will be hammered by a prolonged government shutdown. The D.C. government manages its own budget, but because of its unique form of slavery, the money technically needs to be appropriated by the House of Representatives. And since "government shutdown" is just the shorthand term for "no appropriations," the city government of Washington D.C. can only offer essential services during a shutdown. In other words, no trash pick up! So some residents are just planning to dump their waste outside Speaker John Boehner's "house" instead, which is kind of mean.

Twelve hours until the government shuts down, people! Actually eleven hours and some minutes! Progress was made last evening, however. The only inflexible issue that hasn't been negotiated out, according to everyone, is the few hundred million dollars in federal subsidies for Planned Parenthood.

Things narcissists do to embarrass themselves on the internet: post embarrassing self-portraits on Facebook, beg websites to use cuter pictures of them, and edit their own Wikipedia pages.

A crack team of Harvard researchers have determined that "modern members of Congress spend about 27 percent of the time just taunting each other." That's much lower than we would have expected. It's great news!

Congress still hasn't reached a deal on a continuing resolution to fund the government through September, so we're less than 48 hours away from a government shutdown. Departments and agencies are exhausting most of their time now in panic and preparation. The administration has put out a figure for total furloughed employees: 800,000. Here are more letters from individual federal employees and contractors about how a shutdown would affect them, and what they're hearing. Do you have something to share? Share your greatest fears with newell@gawker.com.

No one can be sure until the last minute, but the odds of a government shutdown in three days have never been higher after a day of collapsed talks. Congressional parties and the White House are hunkering down for cover to ensure they don't get blamed. But it's important to remember, as we watch this parlor game, that a government shutdown affects "real lives" quite directly.

Former Rep. John Adler of New Jersey, a one-term Democratic congressman who lost his seat last November, has died. Adler, who was 51, had undergone emergency heart surgery last month for staph bacterial endocarditis.

The masters of legislative oversight who currently make up America's House Republican majority has another little beef to settle, this time with that most sinister of Washington special interests: The American Association of Retired Persons, a.k.a. the lobby for old people things. If only these geriatrics hadn't endorsed last year's health care reform law, maybe Republicans could've turned a blind eye to such corrupt practices as bribes that ensure Matlock reruns never disappear from daytime television programming. But they did endorse it, so House Republicans are planning hearings.

Next up on the House Republicans' Jobs Agenda, following a measure to defund ObamaCare, a smattering of abortion bills, and an unresolved budget dispute over ghost issues is this wonder from Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes: A bill to reaffirm "In God We Trust" as America's official motto, and to ensure that it's plastered over government buildings everywhere.

The House Republicans' vote to strip NPR of federal funding yesterday was great news for funnyman Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner! It gave him the opportunity to rant sarcastically, again, with a monologue he probably spent all night working on. Since House votes are automatic party-line approvals for whatever Republicans want nowadays, these bitter Weiner rants are pretty much the only reason for Democrats to pay attention to the chamber at all.

America's about to get fixed, everyone, because Sharron Angle is returning to politics! Angle, a comical nutcase, was last seen losing a Nevada Senate race in a strong Republican year to Harry Reid, one of the most disliked persons in the nation. But now she's getting everyone back together for a House run in 2012, as she announced with this delightful video today.

How do the GOP's hot studs in the House get psyched for their days of killer budget cuts and rape redefining? We'd always assumed cocaine! And maybe that's still true. But mostly it's this set of XTREME infomercial workout DVDs that they love.

Maybe you news junkies have been paying so much attention to the actual major news events in Japan, North Africa, the Middle East and various state governments that you forgot about the incompetent dumpheads in Washington, who haven't been able to accomplish anything beyond funding the government every couple of weeks after days of serial posturing about nothing. So let's get this update out of the way and then return to the news: The federal government will probably get funded for another three weeks. Thank your members of Congress!

Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint have introduced a bill to cut that program that they always want to cut: subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, overlord of PBS and NPR. We already know why Republicans want to cut NPR funding so badly, because the liberal snob station fired a reporter last fall over his patriotic belief that Muslims are terrifying. And PBS! They're downright socialist, and Jim Lehrer is a Muslim spy.

So what is it, America: Do you want federal budget cuts or not? Because this new WSJ/NBC poll does not prescribe much in the way of a path going forward:

The House of Representatives passed a two-week stopgap spending measure, cutting (against Democratic objections) $4 billion in spending but—assuming passage of an identical measure in the Senate—averting a government shutdown until March 18. The White House had proposed a 30-day extension with $8 billion in cuts in the hopes of creating some breathing room for budget negotiations; Republicans, eager as always to prove their intractability, preferred the two-week extension as a way to keep pressure on the Democrats to accept their budget, which cuts $61 billion in spending. Today's measure passed 335 to 91, with a majority of both parties voting "yea"; "some Republicans," according to the Times, voted against today's spending measure because it didn't defund the Affordable Health Care Act. Your government in action, folks!