Unlike the real world, where managers and employees are judged on results and held accountable for their performance, in Washington, D.C., loyalty and partisanship almost always come first. Accountability comes later, if it comes at all.

This happens in every administration, and President Obama's is no different, as we've seen with the fatal mistakes made regarding the Fast & Furious gun program and in the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Democrats, claiming to see these as partisan witch hunts designed to hurt the administration politically, circled the wagons. Obama stood loyally by Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton

Loyalty is generally a good thing, in politics, as in life. But Kathleen Sebelius and her agency's rollout of Obamacare is different.

Sebelius' department had 3½ years to prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act. No one ever suggested that commandeering one-sixth of the American economy would be an easy task. (Many Republicans suggested the opposite and were dismissed as killjoys for their efforts.) But after the debacle of the last two weeks, liberals and Democrats - not conservatives or Republicans - should be calling for Sebelius's head.

The administration's handling of the implementation of Obamacare over the past three years has been a slow-moving train wreck: a mixture of embarrassing delays, hard-to-justify waivers, and assorted bad news about the unintended consequences of the law. Some of this was Sebelius's fault, some of it was not.

The crowning blunder came 10 days ago with the rollout of healthcare.gov website, the centerpiece of the administration's effort to sign individuals up for coverage through the government-run health care exchanges that are at the heart of the legislation. To say this was vitally important to the overall success of the law is an understatement. It is the aspect of Obamacare that the president himself has said is utterly essential - and backed up those words by letting the federal government shut down rather that give in to Republican demands to gut it. Nonetheless, its premiere was a giant flop - and Kathleen Sebelius is responsible.

President Barack Obama is risking "impeachable" offenses with the way he is handling the debt limit debate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a post on her Facebook page Monday.

"Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense," Palin wrote.

In her statement, Palin also accused the president of "scaremongering" on the debt ceiling. She suggested that a default could be averted by paying interest on the debt through daily revenues collected by the United States, an idea that has been recently touted by several conservative voices on the right.

"It's also shameful to see him scaremongering the markets with his talk of default. There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution," she said, also adding that the president was trying to "furlough reality" when talking about the debt limit.

Palin was in Washington on Sunday, when she visited the World War II Memorial and protested the government shutdown's impact on veterans. She will visit Iowa next month for the Faith & Freedom Coalition's fall fundraiser.

Jose DelReal is a POLITICO fellow.

France's safety watchdog said on Tuesday it was standing by existing recommendations for mobile phones, wifi and cellphone relay antennas, saying their emissions had "no demonstrated impact" on health.

The National Agency for Health, Food and Environmental Safety (Anses) said that, in lab tests, electromagnetic emissions had had a "biological" effect on cells, although evidence for this was "limited."

But it saw no grounds for recommending any changes to existing laws as there was "no demonstrated impact" on health.

It said, though, it would make a recommendation that children and big users of mobile phones limit their exposure to the devices.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced Sunday that her government was creating a secure email system to try and shield official communications from spying by the United States and other countries.

"We need more security on our messages to prevent possible espionage," Rousseff said on Twitter, ordering the Federal Data Processing Service, or SERPRO, to implement a safe email system throughout the federal government.

The agency, which falls under Brazil's Finance Ministry, develops secure systems for online tax returns and also creates new passports.

Hospitals are cutting thousands of jobs, undercutting a sector that was a reliable source of job growth, even through the recession.

Hospitals, a reliable source of employment growth in the recession and its aftermath, are starting to cut thousands of jobs amid falling insurance payments and inpatient visits.

The payroll cuts are surprising because the Affordable Care Act (ACA), whose implementation took a big step forward this month, is eventually expected to provide health coverage to as many as 30 million additional Americans.

"While the rest of the U.S. economy is stabilizing or improving, health care is entering into a recession," says John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Health care providers announced more layoffs than any other industry last month - 8,128 - largely because of reductions by hospitals, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. So far this year, the health care sector has announced 41,085 layoffs, the third-most behind financial and industrial companies.

An Israeli military officer, who was an advisor to Cameroon's president, has been killed in a helicopter crash in the central African country.

Retired Colonel Avi Sivan's chopper went down near Cameroon's capital city of Yaounde on Monday, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported.

Sivan was responsible for training a presidential guard brigade unit in Cameroon.

There have been no comments on the cause of the incident.

Jill Abramson says she was approached by UK embassy officials after announcing collaboration with Guardian over NSA files

The editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, has confirmed that senior British officials attempted to persuade her to hand over secret documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Giving the newspaper's first official comments on the incident, Abramson said that she was approached by the UK embassy in Washington after it was announced that the New York Times was collaborating with the Guardian to explore some of the files disclosed by Snowden. Among the files are several relating to the activities of GCHQ, the agency responsible for signals interception in the UK.

"They were hopeful that we would relinquish any material that we might be reporting on, relating to Edward Snowden. Needless to say I considered what they told me, and said no," Abramson told the Guardian in an interview to mark the International Herald Tribune's relaunch as the International New York Times.

The incident shows the lengths to which the UK government has gone to try to discourage press coverage of the Snowden leaks. In July, the government threatened to take legal action against the Guardian that could have prevented publication, culminating in the destruction of computer hard drives containing some of Snowden's files.

People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported.

"Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown.

Earlier Saturday shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said shopper Barbara Colman, of Saco, Maine. The manager put up a sign saying the EBT system was not in use. Colman, who receives the benefits, called an 800 telephone line for the program and it said the system was down due to maintenance, she said.

"That's a problem. There are a lot of families who are not going to be able to feed children because the system is being maintenanced," Colman said. She planned to reach out to local officials. "You don't want children going hungry tonight because of stupidity," she said.

People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

At about 9 a.m. Saturday, reports from across the country began pouring in that customers' EBT cards were not working in stores.

At 2 p.m., an EBT customer service representative told CBS Boston that the system was currently down for a computer system upgrade.

Xerox spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer released further details later in the afternoon in an emailed statement.

"While the electronic benefits system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon," Wasmer said. "Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients' patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible."

Despite the government shutdown, Vice President Joe Biden is vacationing at Camp David this long weekend. He's joined at the Maryland retreat by his family, including his wife (Jill Biden), children, and grandchildren.

The vice president is also there with "essential" government workers, who must work despite the government shutdown. That includes his Secret Service detail, as well as the Secret Service details assigned to the rest of his family, and other support staff. They are protecting the Bidens as they vacation -- but aren't getting paid because of the federal shutdown.

The vice president's public schedule simply reads: