Government shutdown vote planned for noon today

The New England Patriots mounted yet another historic comeback yesterday to qualify for yet another Super Bowl. They will play the Philadelphia Eagles, who won their game decisively.

Both contests were welcome distractions from the saga unfolding in Washington, where the federal government continues its shutdown. A vote is now planned for noon today to fund the government through early February.

However, this is not the only significant political news of the day.

Forty-five years ago today, the US Supreme Court announced its 7-2 Roe v. Wade decision. Since that time, more than sixty million babies have been aborted in the United States.

This number is greater than the populations of Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Utah, Nevada, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming–combined.

Meanwhile, America marked another auspicious anniversary yesterday. On January 21, 1998, the scandal over Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke publicly.

The Washington Post credits the scandal with beginning “the true entrenchment of partisans–the polarization of the public–that has paralyzed our current politics.” Democrats viewed the affair as a personal matter with little relevance to the president’s ability to fulfill his office. By contrast, Republicans viewed Clinton’s initial lies about the affair as fundamentally disqualifying.

This seismic partisan fissure has widened significantly in the two decades since. The divisiveness of our politics has understandably affected our trust in government as well. According to the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans in the Eisenhower era said they trust the national government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.” Today, that number stands at 18 percent.

“Congress is downstream from…