Since Rachel made special mention of this article in tonight's opening block, here it is:

Ousting the speaker: House Republicans' long history of regicide - The 20th century hasn't been good to GOP leaders in the House, so Speaker John Boehner might have some cause for concern

The full list of the citations for tonight comes after the jump...

Tonight's guests:

• Senator Chuck Schumer of New York
• Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women 

And here's executive producer Bill Wolff with a preview of what's to come (please rise before engaging soundtrack):

Today's edition of quick hits:

* Under intense pressure, House Republican leaders today scheduled a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief for this Friday. Because it will be the new Congress, however, the measure will still need to start over in the Senate.

* The United Nations has estimated that the violence in Syria in 2012 left as many as 60,000 people dead.

* An encouraging prognosis: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remained at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital for a fourth day with a rare blood clot in her head. But staffers said she has been communicating by phone and doctors said she is expected to make a full recovery."

* Sandy Hook Elementary moves to an unused middle school, seven miles away: "Students from Sandy Hook Elementary School will go back to class Thursday in a borrowed building that one police official described as 'the safest school in America.'"

* The fiscal deal impressed apparently impressed investors: "Financial markets rode a wave of relief over the 'fiscal cliff' Wednesday, as stocks surged on news that Washington had avoided policies that could have caused a recession." The Dow closed up over 300 points.

* Murderous stupidity: "A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train." Erika Menendez allegedly believed she was killing a Hindu man as punishment for 9/11.

* New Delhi: "Indian police have charged six men with murder, adding to accusations that they beat and gang-raped a woman on a New Delhi bus two weeks ago in a case that shocked the country."

* Drone information under wraps: "A federal judge on Wednesday rejected The New York Times' bid to force the U.S. government to disclose more information about its targeted killing of people it believes have ties to terrorism, including American citizens."

* And best of luck to Andrew Sullivan has he launches his new independent web venture.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Following up on a piece from this morning, the House Republican leadership's decision not to hold a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief aid continues to draw widespread condemnations, and this afternoon, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) didn't hold back.

For those who can't watch clips online, Christie said, among other things, "There's only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims the House majority, and their Speaker, John Boehner." The governor added that House Republicans acted with "callous indifference" to the people of New Jersey, and called Congress' inaction "disgraceful."

Christie also noted that he called the Speaker's office four times last night, and in each instance, he was unable to speak to Boehner directly. As for why House Republicans failed to act, the governor blamed the "toxic internal politics of the House majority."

It's worth noting, of course, that Christie is hardly alone. President Obama issued a statement calling for immediate House action: "When tragedy strikes, Americans come together to support those in need. I urge Republicans in the House of Representatives to do the same, bring this important request to a vote today, and pass it without delay for our fellow Americans."

Last year, when you folks sent photos of long lines for voting, we wondered in here whether the lines -- and coverage of the lines -- would suppress turnout. Last week, we got evidence that some people who faced more trouble voting became that much more determined to vote. We also got a sense of how many voters gave up because of the lines: in Central Florida alone, about 49,000. From the Orlando Sentinel:

About 30,000 of those discouraged voters -- most of them in Orange and Osceola counties -- likely would have backed Democratic President Barack Obama, according to Theodore Allen, an associate professor of industrial engineering at OSU.

About 19,000 voters would have likely backed Republican Mitt Romney, Allen said.

To give you a sense of what it was like to be one of those people who couldn't make it through the wait, I want to show you the photos sent by the mother of voter in a different part of Florida, starting above and continuing after the jump. (Thank you all again for kickstarting and fueling this story. How to send us stuff.)

Associated Press

Sen. Patty Murray has been the Democratic point person on the Violence Against Women Act.

Congress had a lengthy to-do list as the end of the year approached, with a series of measures that needed action before 2013 began. Some of the items passed (a fiscal agreement, a temporary farm bill), while others didn't (relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy).

And then there's the Violence Against Women Act, which was supposed to be one of the year's easy ones. It wasn't.

Back in April, the Senate approved VAWA reauthorization fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont's Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho's Mike Crapo), and seemed on track to be reauthorized without much of a fuss, just as it was in 2000 and 2005.

But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans -- and they'd rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn't go anywhere.

And so, for the first time since 1994, the Violence Against Women Act is no more. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democratic point person on VAWA, said in a statement:

"The House Republican leadership's failure to take up and pass the Senate's bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill's protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first."

Proponents of the law hope to revive the law in the new Congress, starting from scratch, but in the meantime, there will be far fewer resources available for state and local governments to combat domestic violence.

As for electoral considerations, Republicans lost badly in the 2012 elections, thanks in large part to the largest gender gap in modern times, but if that changed GOP attitudes towards legislation affecting women, the party is hiding it well.

Guttmacher Institute

The folks at Guttmacher Institute track anti-abortion legislation in the states each year, and today they've released the data from 2012. The raw number showing actual enacted, new abortion restrictions is predictably down from last year's record high of 92. During an election year when all manner of legislative business slows down -- when some legislatures were holding shortened sessions and some were not meeting at all -- no one was expecting 2012 to look quite like 2011. 

The loud, public opposition that proliferated in 2012 also seems to have played at least a minor role in keeping last year's number if not low, then not as high as it could have been. Elizabeth Nash, the state issues director at Guttmacher, says the outcry over Virginia's forced ultrasound law last year "really had an impact in Idaho, Alabama, and Pennsylvania," where similar bills were being considered but not enacted last year. "I'm pretty certain that we would have seen ultrasound mandates in all three states had it not been for the outcry about Virginia," she said. 

But 2012 was still a banner year for new anti-abortion laws. It saw the second-highest number of new anti-abortion laws enacted in the decades following Roe v. Wade. As Guttmacher notes in its analysis of the new data, more than half of the 43 new anti-abortion laws of 2012 were enacted in just six states. 

In December 2010, congressional Republicans forced a contentious fight over tax policy, threatening to raise middle-class taxes and hurt the economy unless Democrats agreed to extend tax breaks for the wealthy. Four months later, the GOP very nearly forced a government shutdown, demanding Democrats accept spending cuts.

In July 2011, congressional Republicans instigated a debt-ceiling crisis, nearly forcing a default and global economic catastrophe, demanding steep spending cuts as a ransom. Three months later, the GOP threatened another government shutdown.

In April 2012, Republicans threatened to force yet another government shutdown, which was followed by the fiscal standoff that wasn't resolved until last night.

The point, of course, is that congressional Republicans are quite comfortable moving from one manufactured, self-imposed crisis to another, resolving one only to immediately pivot to the next, no matter the costs or consequences. It's become a terrifying m.o. that makes routine governing nearly impossible and problem solving a pipe dream.

And yet, so long as Republicans control part of Washington, the pattern will continue. Indeed, the stage is already set for the next crisis, which is now just two months away.

I'm referring, of course, to the one thing President Obama has said he will not budge on: the next debt-ceiling increase.

Getty Images

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Outgoing Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) hasn't officially said whether he'll run to fill John Kerry's vacancy, but he offered a pretty big hint this morning when he went after Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) over his residency. Markey was born and raised in Massachusetts and owns a family home in Malden, but also owns a home in suburban DC.

* In Illinois, state Sen. Donne Trotter (D) was widely seen as a top contender in the upcoming special election to fill former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s (D-Ill.) vacancy, but he dropped out of the race over the weekend. In early December, Trotter was charged with trying to board an airplane with a weapon.

* Speaking of Illinois, former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley appears to be gearing up for a gubernatorial campaign in his home state, preparing to take on incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn in a Democratic primary.

* In Texas, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's campaign manager, longtime GOP consultant Kenneth "Buddy" Barfield, is suspected of stealing as much as $1 million from political accounts over the past several years.

* In Hawaii, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii), who was passed over the state's U.S. Senate vacancy, is reportedly receiving "a lot of pressure" to run against Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) in 2014. Abercrombie appointed his lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz (D), to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye's (D) seat last week.

* We haven't heard the last of former South Carolina Gov. Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford (R), who is reportedly going to run for Tim Scott's (R) U.S. House seat once Scott moves up to the Senate.

* And speaking of comebacks, former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D) is reportedly eyeing a second run at his old job. Culver lost as an incumbent in 2010 to Terry Branstad (R).

If you listened to many of the fiscal agreement's critics yesterday, especially on the right, one of the more common complaints was that the McConnell/Biden deal missed the entire point of the exercise. The entire effort was supposed to be about debt reduction, and the deal, they argued, makes matters worse, not better.

The Senate deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO determined Tuesday that the package, hammered out late Monday evening by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would -- over the next decade -- come with a $3.9 trillion price tag.

To be sure, I can appreciate why this looks discouraging for the "Fix the Debt" crowd, but the truth is a little more complicated than the raw CBO score suggests.

First, the Congressional Budget Office was working from the baseline that assumed literally all of the Bush-era tax breaks would expire -- in other words, that Congress simply ignored all of the 2012 fiscal deadlines -- and by that metric, the agreement has a multi-trillion price tag. On the other hand, if we compare the new law against the baseline that existed as recently as Monday, the deal won't increase the deficit at all. On the contrary, it will bring in between $600 billion and $650 billion, depending on the extent to which you want to count interest on the debt.

The deficit has already shrunk by about $300 billion over the course of President Obama's first term, and thanks to this new revenue, it's on track to shrink even more.

Second, and this is the politically salient part, it doesn't make sense for conservatives to complain about this since they were the ones who demanded less deficit reduction, not more.

Associated Press

In 2004, then-Vice President Cheney appeared on the Senate floor for an annual photo-op, and ran into Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who tried to be friendly. Cheney replied, "Go f*** yourself."

Last week, the phrase popped up again, this time just outside the Oval Office.

House Speaker John Boehner couldn't hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a "dictatorship" in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

"Go f*** yourself," Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.

Reid, a bit startled, replied: "What are you talking about?" Boehner repeated: "Go f*** yourself."

The Speaker was so pleased with himself, he boasted about the exchange to his House GOP colleagues -- who in turn boasted to Politico.

I guess the Starbucks cups didn't have much of an effect on Boehner?

All kidding aside, it's worth noting that Harry Reid appears to have had the last laugh. The suggestion that drew Boehner's ire was the Senate Majority Leader's demand that the House vote up or down on a tax compromise, ignoring the so-called "Hastert Rule," even if a majority of House Republicans opposed the deal.

The Speaker's vulgarities notwithstanding, it was GOP lawmakers who were muttering obscenities last night when Boehner ended up doing exactly what Reid wanted him to do.

Late Friday, the Senate approved a $60.4 billion bill to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy, including grants for homeowners and businesses, and investments in regional infrastructure for projects like hospitals and transit systems. All the funding needed to pass was House approval.

Last night, however, House Republican leaders announced after passing the fiscal agreement that there would be no more votes in this Congress -- effectively killing Sandy aid and forcing the process to start over. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged the GOP to reconsider.

It wasn't supposed to go this way. Earlier in the day, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) seemed prepared to bring a smaller Sandy aid bill to the floor -- the Senate was even prepared to approve it by unanimous consent today -- but without explanation, House GOP leaders reversed course last night.

Associated Press

We talked a week ago about the farm bill that was stuck in Congress, and the spike in dairy prices Americans would see if the legislation failed to pass. The Senate approved its version over the summer, but House Republicans refused to take up the bill, and for a variety of complicated reasons, the result was likely to be an unstable market and milk prices at $8 a gallon.

The good news is, that's not going to happen, thanks to a nine-month farm bill extension that was included in the larger fiscal agreement approved by the House last night. The bad news is, the temporary fix is still a bit of a mess.

In the final hours, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) found herself pushed aside in favor of legislative language generated by the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a bit player and frequent "no" vote when the Senate adopted a more comprehensive five-year farm bill last June.

McConnell's role in the tax talks gave him immense leverage, while Stabenow was hurt by committee infighting over her efforts to write a more comprehensive farm bill extension that included changes in the dairy program.

The upshot is a victory for Southern agricultural interests with the greatest stake in a costly system of direct cash payments to often already profitable producers. In the dairy arena, giant processors like Dean Foods Co. come out ahead while the outcome is a major blow for the National Milk Producers Federation, which watched with disbelief from the sidelines on New Year's Eve.

Farmers see the existing dairy support program as an out-of-date system in need of reform and a long-term fix, and many policymakers focused on agricultural policy hoped to see Congress approve a five-year plan.

None of that is happening, farming interests on Capitol Hill appear increasingly divided in their lobbying strategy, and the dairy industry is incensed.

Agriculture may not be the sexiest political issue on the landscape, but we can expect this to be a major point of contention in the new Congress.

Once the fiscal agreement reached by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Biden was announced, one thing became clear: both liberals and conservatives were convinced their purported allies had given away far too much, tilting the deal heavily in their rivals' direction. Of course, logic suggests they can't both be right.

Using Suzy Khimm's summary of the agreement as a guide, here's a tale of the tape.

It's also worth noting that the deal included some provisions that both sides wanted, such as another "doc fix" on Medicare reimbursements and a permanent Alternative Minimum Tax correction, which don't really count as a concession or a gain for either party.

What's more, the automatic sequestration cuts remain very much in play -- they've been delayed by two months -- and will require policymakers' attention very soon.

That said, we can expect liberals and conservatives to continue to make the case that the deal could have been vastly better. For the left, Democrats accepted too many concessions, giving up tax revenue from the wealthy they likely would have secured if the deadlines went unmet and the new Congress had to scramble for a deal.

For the right, Republicans managed to protect some tax breaks for the wealthy, but really only mitigated damage. The GOP still ended up accepting a plan with over $600 billion in new tax revenue, but no Medicare cuts, no Social Security cuts, and no new spending cuts of any kind. Charles Krauthammer, an influential voice on the right, called the agreement a "complete rout for Democrats" and "complete surrender" for congressional Republicans.