Pat Enright Kaplan

MacFarlane: So this whole DHS funding standoff, this painful shutdown, which has exacted pain on workers and travelers, appears to be near its end. But this whole knucklehead enterprise really got us nowhere. While you were sleeping, the U.S. Senate finally passed its version of the bill. It funds all of the Department of Homeland Security except the border and immigration components. Democrats say that’s essentially what they were offering all along—that Republicans could have met them there sooner. Republicans, in turn, argue that Democrats strung this out. It’s a pox on everyone’s house, potentially—politically—because people are just frustrated and don’t really care about the politics when they’re sitting in a three-hour TSA line.