Ted Cruz blasted by angry GOP colleagues  —  Ted Cruz faced a barrage of hostile questions Wednesday from angry GOP senators, who lashed the Texas tea party freshman for helping prompt a government shutdown crisis without a strategy to end it.  —  At a closed-door lunch meeting …

Poll: Americans not happy about shutdown; more blame GOP  —  PLAY CBS NEWS VIDEO  —  On day three of the partial government shutdown, a new CBS News poll reveals that a large majority of Americans disapprove of the shutdown and more are blaming Republicans than President Obama and the Democrats for it.

California exchange overstated its Web traffic for Obamacare launch  —  Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, discusses the launch of the state's insurance exchange Tuesday in Los Angeles.  (Reed Saxon/AP / October 2, 2013)  —  California's health insurance exchange vastly overstated …

Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law  —  A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people …

Montana lieutenant governor announces Senate bid  —  Montana Lieutenant Gov. John Walsh (D) will run for the Senate, he announced Thursday morning, giving Democrats a viable recruit in the GOP-leaning state.  —  Walsh, a former adjudant general in the Montana National Guard who served in Iraq …

Denny Hastert Disses the ‘Hastert Rule’: It ‘Never Really Existed’  —  The former Republican speaker's ‘rule,’ that you can't bring legislation to the House floor without a majority of GOP votes, is cited as the reason Boehner can't end the shutdown.  But Hastert tells Eleanor Clift it's a ‘non-entity’ …

Mark Levin to Obama: You lay one hand on WW2 vets and I'LL BRING HALF A MILLION PEOPLE TO THAT MEMORIAL!  —  Mark Levin warned everyone on Capitol Hill that if they lay a hand on the WWII vets at the memorial to arrest them for visiting their own memorial, he'll bring a half a million people to march on Washington.

Brendan Mahoney Saves ObamaCare  —  Great news!  They got a 30-year-old dude to sign up!  —  “People complain of having to stand in line for hours, often in vain, and many are losing patience with the government's explanation that unsavory conspirators are to blame for the nation's problems,” reports the New York Times.

Lehigh County same-sex benefits in limbo  —  Lehigh commissioner challenges budget item: Next it's giving money to pets.  — Pin It  —  An amendment eliminating benefits for same-sex couples is the first to roll out in response to a Lehigh County budget with a $10 million deficit.

Kent Sorenson resigns from Senate  —  Investigation into Bachmann payments finds ‘probable cause’ he broke ethics rules  —  Iowa senator resigns amid ethics probe: Des Moines Register politics editor Carol Hunter and Statehouse reporter Jason Noble discuss the resignation of Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson.

Taylor Griffin running for Congress in N.C.  —  Taylor Griffin, a former aide to President George W. Bush who went on to co-found Hamilton Place Strategies, has moved back home to eastern North Carolina and on Thursday will announce a challenge to a fellow Republican, Rep. Walter Jones.

Gov't shutdown spreads to beaches of Normandy  —  PARIS — Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government's partial shutdown.

EXCLUSIVE: Less than 1% of visitors are signing up for Obamacare on state health exchange websites  — A Connecticut congressman boasted that his state took 167 applications for Obamacare services on day one, a rate of 0.59 per cent  — Obama administration won't say how many Americans signed …

In Showdown With G.O.P., a Scrappy Reid Plays Hardball  —  WASHINGTON — It was not enough for Senator Harry Reid to just dismiss Republican offers as “vexatious” or “kid's stuff” or “one cockamamie, can't-pass idea after another.”  He called the White House and asked it to issue a veto threat, which it promptly did.

Leave us out of it!  —  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens to a question at an event Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013, in Camden, N.J. (Photo by Mel Evans/AP)  —  Washington Republicans are getting little help from their friends in governor's mansions across the country.