Enough attempting to suppress homosexuality by banning gay marriage from state to state. Tea Party leader Rick Scarborough is focused on the bigger picture. At a Tea Party Unity gathering on Thursday, Scarborough chatted with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality President Peter LaBarbera about his grand scheme for taking on the homosexuality lobby with a class action lawsuit like the one pursued against the major tobacco companies.

“The whole issue of a class action lawsuit, you and I have talked about this a little bit,” Scarborough said. “Obviously, statistically now even the Centers for Disease Control verifies homosexuality more likely to lead to AIDS than smoking leads to cancer.

The budget shutdown that wounded the Republican brand last week also inflicted pain on the GOP in Florida: The party lost a seat held for decades by Republicans, and Gov. Rick Scott was hit with a hurdle to his reelection strategy.

The governor has spent the last six months distancing himself from his February decision to embrace taking $51 billion from the federal government to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and the disastrous enrollment rollout appeared to help Republicans keep the issue from returning in the next legislative session.

The government shutdown and looming threat of default have pitted House conservatives against the Republican Party's traditional allies in the business community. Populist Tea Partiers driven by ideology care little for the pleas for sanity from banking lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce; indeed, they wear their disregard for Big Business as a badge of honor.

Where does that leave the Koch brothers? The billionaire industrialists have funded a sprawling empire of libertarian-conservative activism; they've been dubbed the bankrollers of the Tea Party. Liberals frequently accuse them of seeking deregulatory policies to further their company's financial interests. But what happens when the Tea Party's ideological warfare threatens to plunge the U.S. economy into chaos?

The Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday, charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African-Americans, according to a person familiar with the planned litigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at noon at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. attorneys from North Carolina.