The New York Times has a must-read look at the people surrounding Hillary Clinton, with a special focus on confidant Phillip Reines.

“The job of keeping out the claqueurs now falls partly on Reines, who is known in the Clinton world as slightly paranoid, often hilarious and somewhat quirky. He is 44 and lives in a Dupont Circle apartment with his cats Uday and Qusay, named after the thuggish sons of Saddam Hussein. He once accidentally stuck his fingers in my water glass over breakfast to clear a stain from his dress shirt. At lunch, he orders an Arnold Palmer and a Diet Coke, seemingly just because. He also instills a healthy dose of terror in the extended Clinton family that his boss is said to appreciate. Almost everyone I talked to dutifully emailed Reines to ask for permission before they spoke to me.”

Even 100 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine a man making a statement as ridiculous as what Mr. Huckabee said today.

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) January 23, 2014

Pop singer Clay Aiken (D) is assembling a political team for a run at the Democratic nomination in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District, sources told WRAL News.

Roll Call: “But his candidacy is being met with skepticism by some Tar Heel State Democrats, who are holding out hope of making it a race in this Republican-leaning district.”

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) would be a great president if he ran in 2016 but he made clear he is not endorsing anybody yet, The Hill reports.

Said Boehner: “Well listen I’m not endorsing anybody, but Jeb Bush is my friend, and I frankly think he would be a great president, I really do.”

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton “may not make a big splash if he jumps into the presidential race — as those close to him expect he will — but his flirtation raises some intriguing questions,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Which face of the Republican Party will dominate if and when foreign policy rears its head during the next presidential campaign? And is there opportunity in running as the party’s resident hawk?”

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or reproductive system without the help of the government, so be it. Let us take that discussion all across America.”

— Mike Huckabee, quoted by Politico.

Peter Beinart: “So if Christie is no longer the candidate to beat in the 2016 Republican race, who is? Believe it or not, it’s Rand Paul.”

“To understand the Kentucky senator’s hidden strength, it’s worth remembering this basic fact about the modern GOP: It almost never nominates first-time candidates. Since 1980, George W. Bush is the only first-timer to win a Republican nomination. And since Bush used the political network his father built, he enjoyed many of the benefits of someone who had run before. It’s the same with Paul. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he begins with an unparalleled infrastructure left over from his father Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.”