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When the federal government hits its debt ceiling at the end of the month, don't expect another big red-on-blue confrontation.

The appetite in the House Republican conference for that kind of debt-defying standoff isn't what it was last fall when the nation was hit by the double whammy of the debt limit and partial federal government shutdown.

And the House GOP can't even agree on what points to negotiate with President Obama — who has said he's not willing to negotiate on the debt ceiling anyway.

As a result, there's now the possibility that the GOP failure to find intraparty agreement may lead to the very thing Obama has been wanted all along — a clean debt ceiling bill. But he would get it by default, so to speak.

Steve Bell, a fiscal expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican Senate aide who's familiar with House Republican discussions, says the two likeliest options at this point are a clean debt-ceiling bill or legislation linking an increase in the government's borrowing authority to restoration of recent cuts to military pension benefits.

The lowered cost-of-living adjustments for retired military was part of the budget agreement reached last year by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"It was the only entitlement savings in the whole damn plan that Murray and Ryan put together," Bell said. "Republicans and Democrats alike have been trying to kill it," even though Pentagon officials have said the modest COLA reductions are essential for the military to maintain its war-fighting readiness over the coming decade. Growing pension costs are crowding out other defense spending.

"I think the one thing they will do will be disheartening," Bell said. "They will pass the debt bill on time and they will attach to it a reversal of the only retirement savings in the entire... budget plan. So for guys like me who've been doing this since 1979, this a time when you have a choice between crying and laughing. And I'm just laughing. You can't blame it on one party or the other."

The smart money is on the debt ceiling being raised perhaps for as long as a year. That would put the next vote to raise it safely past the mid-term elections and perhaps into the next Congress. If the vote came just after the elections instead, it would mean a lame duck Congress, with its many retiring members, would vote on a higher debt ceiling — removing the controversy at least from the new Congress' immediate to-do list.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, also expects that a debt-ceiling boost will happen in a remarkably straightforward way given the turbulence of recent years.

"It looks as though the debt ceiling is likely to be increased without any last minute soap operas," she said. "Ironically, it looks like it will be a clean debt ceiling increase because Republicans are having such a hard time coming up with any viable policy to attach to it," she said.

Instead of a protracted fight, then, what House Republicans are up against is time, the House calendar to be exact. The House only has one full work day this week since the House Democrats' retreat starts Wednesday and goes through Friday.

The House is out the following President's Day week and returns the Tuesday of the last week of February. That leaves no time for dawdling on on their return since Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said the debt ceiling must be raised by Feb. 27 if the nation is to avoid a historic default on its obligations.

One thing a clean debt-ceiling bill, or one with legislation restoring the full military pension COLA, would do is make it likelier House GOP leaders could get most Democrats to join with a few dozen Republicans to reach the 218 votes needed to pass a debt-ceiling hike.

MacGuineas, a debt hawk, is glad to see the end — at least for now — of the recent practice of holding the nation's credit rating hostage. But she fears what may happen now, or won't happen, now that policymakers have don't have the "forcing mechanism" of raising the debt ceiling to make them consider the nation's indebtedness.

"The debt ceiling used to be used as a reminder that we had to focus on debt levels when they were too high," she said. "But at this point, Congress is unable to make any real policy progress that the debt ceiling is likely to be lifted without any effort to try to get control of the fiscal situation."

It's been nearly four years since activists engaged in a battle over a Supreme Court nomination, and a tepid one it was.

Republicans barely pushed back on President Obama's 2010 nomination of Elena Kagan, his second appointment in as many years. She was confirmed by the Senate, 63-37.

At the time, influential Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona acknowledged the problem inherent in pursuing a high court battle: The GOP had only 41 Senate votes, making it "pretty difficult" to sustain a filibuster against Kagan, or any Obama appointee.

That could change by year's end.

Republicans are growing increasingly confident that they can win control of the Senate this fall — and with it the power to block, or at least bedevil, Obama's efforts to fill potential Supreme Court vacancies during his last two years in office.

That prospect means that interest groups including the National Rifle Association, the conservative Committee for Justice, and the liberal People for the American Way are starting to fire up their message machines in what all view as a singular opportunity to shape the high court going forward, given its current makeup.

The Committee for Justice last week asserted that "filibustering a bad nominee will not be an option" without a Senate takeover, warning that Democrats could expand the "nuclear option" to the president's Supreme Court nominees. At People for the American Way, Marge Baker said retaining Senate control is necessary to prevent Republicans from solidifying what she characterized as a court that "tilts more and more toward corporations and the powerful."

Both arguments aim directly at each party's base. And while Supreme Court appointments don't rank high on lists of voter priorities in either party — health care, unemployment and budget concerns are usually the most cited by voters — the issue could play a role in determining the outcome in several close races.

"I'm not going to tell you that I expect this to be a first-order issue, but it may inform and affect the first-order issues," says Ed Whelan, of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. "Issues like Obamacare, for example, or how the president might be using, or abusing, executive orders."

"It's an additional argument to rally the respective bases to turn out," he said.

Seasoned Justices, But No Retirees Yet

Two of the four oldest justices on the court, which leans conservative 5-4, are liberals. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is 80 and has survived two bouts of cancer; Justice Stephen Breyer is 75. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia is 77, as is Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative considered a swing vote on some issues.

Those facts suggest that a vacancy is not outside the realm of possibility, though no one has indicated plans to step down from his or her lifetime appointment, including Ginsburg. She (and Breyer, to a lesser degree) have consistently dismissed pressure to step down from progressives anxious to guarantee that Obama picks her successor.

In attempting to rally the party faithful around the high court issue, Committee for Justice President Curt Levey has warned Republicans that it's not just liberal justices Obama may have an opportunity to replace but also any of the five justices he characterizes as "center-right."

The Issues At Stake

The machinations surrounding the potential Supreme Court vacancies are heightened by recent events: the president's Affordable Care Act, upheld by the high court in 2012; the court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on campaign ads and other electioneering tools; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to eliminate filibusters for presidential nominations — with the exception of Supreme Court nominees; the evergreen issues of guns and abortion.

Both sides see opportunity.

"In a number of ways, the court will definitely figure into the 2014 elections, and we see the issue as a winning one for progressives," says Baker, of People for the American Way. "We start with outrage over Citizens United, which has only grown in four years."

The NRA and conservative group also see political promise in the fight, especially in close races where motivating just a sliver of the base has the potential to make a significant difference.

"An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year," those officials tell The Associated Press.

The wire service writes that "four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him."

The Washington Post, which has followed up on the AP report, writes that "U.S. officials" it has spoken with "said that no decision has been reached on whether to add the alleged operative to the administration's kill list, a step that would require Justice Department approval under new counterterrorism guidelines adopted by President Obama last year."

CNN writes that a senior U.S. official says "high-level discussions" are under way about "staging an operation to kill an American citizen involved with al-Qaida and suspected of plotting attacks against the United States."

That network adds that the official "declined to disclose any specific information about the target or the country the suspect presides in."

The Post writes that "U.S. officials have not revealed the identify of the alleged operative, or the country where he is believed to be located, citing concern that disclosing those details would send him deeper into hiding and prevent a possible drone strike."

The AP says it "has agreed to the government's request to withhold the name of the country where the suspected terrorist is believed to be because officials said publishing it could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations."

One year ago, the Justice Department drew up a "white paper" defining when it believes an American citizen overseas can and cannot be the target of a U.S. drone strike. As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported last February, "the document says the U.S. doesn't need clear evidence of a specific attack to strike." The definition of what poses an imminent threat appears to be "a little stretchy, like a rubber band," she added. She also said that the memo makes the case that the U.S. government "doesn't have to try all that hard to capture someone" if they are in another country and trying to grab them would be an "undue burden."

Three months later, in May 2013, President Obama said in a policy address that:

"I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone, or with a shotgun — without due process, nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.

"But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team."

At 88 years old, and after seven decades in the business, Los Angeles radio host Art Laboe is still at it.

Six nights a week on The Art Laboe Connection, Laboe takes requests from his loyal listeners, who tune in on more than a dozen stations in California and the Southwestern United States.

This week, he'll be hosting his annual series of Valentine's concerts, featuring the "Oldies But Goodies" he's played for decades.

Laboe, with his welcoming baritone voice, has won his share of accolades over his long career. Among others, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1981 and a spot in the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2012.

But it's the adoration of Laboe's fans that keeps him going.

"You have a beautiful, handsome voice," caller "Leticia" recently told Laboe on the air. "You're in the right field."

Somewhat flustered, Laboe replied, "You've got me blushing."

In Love With Radio From An Early Age