Tea Party members of Congress like Sen. Ted Cruz are threatening to shut down the federal government in an effort to defund health care reform while, simultaneously, attempting to place the blame for any such shut down on President Obama.

Obviously, pulling that off successfully will require the creation of some pretty ingenious arguments, one of which Cruz tried out last week when he was interviewed on Newsmax TV where he asserted that the term “shut down is a misnomer; what it in fact is is a partial, temporary shut down” where “nonessential government functions are temporarily suspended.

“Now that’s inconvenient,” Cruz admitted, before adding “but we actually see that every single week on the weekends”: