Why did the Obama administration, after dragging out the various court challenges to ObamaCare, suddenly step on the gas?

The administration surprised court watchers by passing up a chance to slow down ObamaCare's long march to an eventual Supreme Court ruling. In failing to request a hearing by all the appeals court judges of the 11th Circuit -- to overturn an anti-ObamaCare decision by three of its members -- the administration now puts the matter on a faster track to the Supreme Court.

The court will likely agree to hear the case because two appellate circuit courts, the 11th and 6th, have issued contradictory rulings -- one striking down the individual mandate as unconstitutional, and the other upholding it. This confusion practically guarantees a hearing by the top court, probably months before next year's election.

What provoked the administration's change of heart....

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rebuke to GOP leaders, the House on Wednesday rejected a measure providing $3.7 billion for disaster relief as part of a bill to keep the government running through mid-November.

The surprise 230-195 defeat came at the hands of Democrats and tea party Republicans.

Democrats were opposed because the measure contains $1.5 billion in cuts to a government loan program to help car companies build fuel-efficient vehicles. For their part, many GOP conservatives felt the underlying bill permits spending at too high a rate.

The outcome sends House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his leadership team back to the drawing board as they seek to make sure the government doesn't shut down at the end of next week.

“Today, POTUS will call for extension of the transportation bill which expires 9/30. If not extended, nearly a million will be out of work. Normally, we wouldnt have to worry about this, but the FAA debacle shows we cant assume people wont use it as a chance to drive their agenda”

-- Tweet from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer

President Obama wants Congress to quickly pass an unconditioned extension of the federal gasoline tax, which is set to expire at the end of the government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993 and generates more than $32 billion a year that is then mostly passed out to states for road construction and repair. About 15 percent goes to other federal efforts, like subsidizing public transportation or other efforts to discourage driving.

The Tea Party Express is poised to take its "Reclaiming America" message to some key early primary states.

This will be the organization's fifth national bus tour. Last year, the participation of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin drew a great deal of media attention. This year's event will kick off on Saturday, August 27, in Napa, California. Conservative rallies will be held in 29 cities over a span of 17 days, and the tour will culminate September 12 in Tampa, Florida, where the Tea Party Express will co-host a "historic" presidential debate with CNN.

"Our purpose is to encourage conservatives to work hard to reclaim America from some of the failed policies that the Obama administration has put in that have just been a disaster for our economy," explains spokesman Levi Russell. "Along the way, we'll be inviting the presidential candidates to come out and make the case for why they think they deserve the support of the tea party movement"...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has assembled a team of pro-life, conservative legal heavyweights to advise him on legal matters — specifically on the right kind of judges he should consider should he become president.

The pro-life bonafides of the legal team are so significant that Romney, who shifted to the pro-life position, could find himself winning over some skeptics who worry about the kind of judges he would appoint if elected.

The co-chairman of the new Romney Justice Advisory Committee is former Appeals Court justice Robert Bork, a prior Supreme Court nominee who is highly-regarded by pro-life and conservative voters for his legal acumen, his steadfastly pro-life, conservative views and because of the way liberals treated him during his failed bid to become a Supreme Court justice. Bork, had he been confirmed, would be one of the justices on the high court ready to consider a case to overturn Roe v.

As the final vote on raising the government’s borrowing limit approached Tuesday, Republican after Republican took to the Senate floor to attack the bipartisan deal. The one unifying theme: Most were freshman, newly elected with the support of the tea party movement, and showed no qualms about bucking their own party’s leaders who wrote the deal.

Gone are the days when new senators are seen but not heard.

As the Senate signaled this week, freshman Republicans are not only being heard — they are carrying the Republican tea party rebellion straight into the heart of the world’s most exclusive club, where they have provided reinforcements to the small group of conservatives that for years fought losing battles on spending cuts...

The influence of the Tea Party is about to endure a critical test, as lawmakers enter the second chapter of their deficit-reduction plan after approving a record increase in the debt ceiling.

Conservative Republicans have been conflicted over the 11th-hour compromise and the course of the debate as a whole. While they claim credit for shifting the conversation in Washington from stimulus to deficit reduction, Tea Party lawmakers and activists were disappointed with the result of the debt-cap talks.

In the end, 66 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans, many of them Tea Party aligned, opposed the package out of concern that it didn't go far enough...

Washington – Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has signed off on a tentative debt-ceiling compromise, saying he hopes lawmakers can finalize a deal and move to a vote as early as Sunday.

At the same time, concerns were spreading on the conservative side that the emerging plan could cut too deeply into defense spending, raising questions about whether the framework can attract enough bipartisan support.

One congressional source said the deal is not yet sealed. But Reid, becoming the first congressional leader to publicly endorse the plan, said late Sunday afternoon through a spokesman that he had signed off on it "pending caucus approval"....

WASHINGTON -- Neither the House nor the Senate has a clear path forward for must-pass legislation to allow the government to continue to borrow to pay its bills, putting lawmakers and financial markets alike on edge less than a week before the deadline for heading off the nation's first-ever default.

House Speaker John Boehner was forced late Tuesday to postpone a floor vote on his plan, which originally had been scheduled for Wednesday, after nonpartisan congressional scorekeepers said the proposal would cut spending less than advertised. He promised to rewrite the measure, but the move means the House can't vote on it until Thursday at the earliest.

Boehner, R-Ohio, needs to do more than pump up the legislation. He needs to shore up his standing with tea party-backed conservatives demanding deeper spending cuts to accompany an almost $1 trillion increase in the government's borrowing cap. Many conservatives already had promised to oppose it...

House Republicans do not have enough support to pass their debt-ceiling increase plan on their own, a top conservative said Tuesday as his party’s leaders tried to cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to put the bill over the top.

“There are not 218 Republicans in support of this plan,” Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who heads the powerful conservative caucus in the House, told reporters Tuesday morning.

If Mr. Jordan is right, that would mean Speaker John A. Boehner would have to rely on Democrats to pass the $1.2 trillion spending cuts plan — support Democrats’ top vote-counter said he’ll be hard-pressed to gain. Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer said “very few” Democrats will vote for the Boehner plan, though he acknowledged there could be some...