US Shutdown Day 1

Oh No, say it ain't so, the Statue of Liberty is closed?  Well at least they haven't covered it with a tarp.  The Guardian reported that hundreds of thousands of government workers go on unpaid leave today.  I guess the Smithsonian is in the same boat.

National Guard soldiers rebuilding washed-out roads would apparently be paid on time — along with the rest of the country's active-duty personnel — under a bill passed hours before the shutdown. Existing social security and Medicare benefits, veterans' services and mail delivery were also unaffected.
Other agencies were harder hit — nearly 3,000 Federal Aviation Administration safety inspectors were laid off, along with most of the National Transportation Safety Board's employees, including accident investigators who respond to air crashes, train collisions, pipeline explosions and other accidents.
Almost all of NASA shut down, except for mission control in Houston, and national parks closed along with the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. Even the zoo's popular pandacam went dark.

The Washington Post reports that:

An estimated 800,000 federal workers now face furloughs indefinitely, while roughly 1.3 million will remain on the job as “excepted” employees because they protect human life and property, or because their positions are paid for by funds outside of congressional appropriations. 
Federal workers will show up for work on Tuesday regardless of whether they face furloughs, and those who are placed on leave must spend a few hours making preparations for their absences. That means closing down work stations, setting up their out-of-office e-mail alerts, and putting things in order.
More on the Post’s Shutdown FAQ page.
Agencies will eventually pay excepted employees for work they do during the shutdown, but not until Congress approves a new round of appropriations.  The situation for furloughed feds is not so clear, as lawmakers would have to pass legislation that pays them for time they didn’t actually work — through no fault of their own. That’s what legislators did in 1996, but it’s far from certain that today’s Congress would agree to such a deal.

Other headlines on the political situation
LA Times "Because the No. 1 priority of House Republicans is to cater to the fantasies of their tea party constituents, the federal government has been shut down. The loony legions that drive Republican primary elections now are driving the United States toward calamity."
 Washington Post "We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican “establishment”; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality."