Here we go again.

Thanks to the leadership in Washington, which is starting to make the captain of the Costa Concordia look good, the government is shutting down again. Sorta.

Postal workers, border guards, air traffic controllers and other critical employees will remain on the job while everyone else gets to spend time on the shelf.

The so-called non-critical employees must feel like a pair of brown shoes in the tuxedo store. It also makes you wonder if members of Congress consider themselves critical and if they are still getting a paycheck.

How long this shutdown will last is unknown, but that is actually irrelevant because it should not have happened in the first place.

If we are going to have a shutdown, then maybe its time we had a real one and tell everyone to go home. Ground air traffic, forget about who might be crossing the border and have the military stand down. Simply close up shop everywhere and let the country and economy slam to a screeching halt.

This might be what the citizenry needs to finally take a good hard look at the yahoos who mouth all the blather about not giving an inch and realize government cannot function if it is hamstrung by people who are so inflexible, arrogant, narrow-minded, visionless and occasionally downright stupid that they would rather wreck the ship than accept a course correction.

A total shutdown might be just what the mob needs to charge the steps of Congress carrying torches and pitchforks. That's what it took to get Frankenstein's attention.

Depending upon which talking head you wish to hear, the reason for the logjam in Congress is the funding of the Affordable Care Act.

Whether you like this legislator or not, the bottom line is that it passed and is the law of the land. You don't have a snit fit and try to do an end-run to stop its implementation by not funding the measure while ignoring how many innocent people your positions hurts.

What you do if you are opposed to a law is fulfill your obligations to the workings of government then go out and attempt to elect enough folks who are on your side and try to overturn the offending legislation.

If you win, you win; if you lose, you lose. That's politics.

But just as the first rule of medicine is to do no harm, you do not mumble half-true platitudes about your principles and promote your own self-aggrandizement to the detriment of others.

It may be time for the torches and pitchforks.

To find out more about Scott Rasmussen, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.