Rep. Raul Labrador’s (R-ID) fired his spokesman after he mistakenly tweeted in the name of his boss about his admiration for two actresses pole dancing in a Super Bowl ad, the Idaho Statesman reports.

The tweet, “Me likey Broke Girls,” was deleted after 14 seconds but is archived on a website that collects deleted tweets from politicians.

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Following reports that he plans an aggressive campaign schedule in the midterm elections, President Obama predicted that if Democrats pursue an ambitious agenda, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will soon have the speaker’s gavel back, the Washington Post reports.

Said Obama: “It won’t be smooth, it won’t be simple, there will be frustrations, there will be times when you guys will be mad at me, and I’ll occasionally read about it. I would expect that Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again pretty soon.”

Former House members “are spending their leftover money to pay for everything from luxury cars to foundations that bear their names,” USA Today reports. “The practice is legal but raises questions among government watchdogs about whether these accounts are used as political slush funds.”

“Federal rules bar former lawmakers from using leftover campaign money for their personal use, but a review of new reports show their contributors’ dollars pay for a wide range of expenses. Of the 82 House members who were defeated or resigned from the last Congress, more than one in four had more than $100,000 remaining in their campaign accounts at the end of 2012.”

Politico: “Twenty-one years ago, Nadeam Elshami got his first job on Capitol Hill, working in the Senate mailroom Today,
he’s the chief of staff to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of
California after serving as her communications director for the past
several years.”

A new Smart Politics report finds that nearly 40% of U.S. Representatives serve in districts outside of their birth state.
 
Key findings: 62.4% of lawmakers currently serving in the House represent districts in their birth state — 270 of 433 non-vacant seats — with 37.6% born elsewhere.
 
Despite the increased opportunities of mobility of the population over the decades, it is actually the younger lawmakers serving in the 113th Congress who are most likely to represent a district in the state of their birth at 69.8% for those born in the 1970s and 1980s. That number falls to 64.6% for those born in the 1960s, 61.4% for the 1950s, 59.6% for the 1940s, and 54.2% for the 1920s and 1930s.

“House Republicans appeared to be coming to grips with a stark realization as they returned to Washington from a three-day retreat here — they have a majority in name only,” The Hill reports.

“The party begins the 113th Congress with reduced numbers and confronting a popular president and an increased Democratic majority in the Senate. Preparing for a cascade of fiscal battles and a presidential push on guns and immigration, the House GOP is adopting a minority posture, hoping to achieve modest goals incrementally while serving as a check on Obama’s ambitious second-term agenda.”

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) admitted to TPM that the “Hastert Rule” — which says Republicans will only bring legislation to the floor which is supported by a majority of the majority — may be inoperable in the House when it comes to crucial legislation like raising the debt ceiling.

Said Fleming: “I think the Republicans would have a real problem giving the president a clean debt ceiling, even… short term. Maybe some would do it, but I think to get a majority of the majority vote, I think it’s impossible.”

He added: “I think that the majority of the majority Hastert rule comes out of a time when we had a Republican president. When you have a Democrat president that’s a very hard thing to achieve sometimes — and not necessarily important.”

Susan Davis: “Unproductive and unpopular are two words most often used to describe the previous Congress, but a new description can be used for the new session: inexperienced.”

“Nearly two in five lawmakers in the U.S. House, 39%, have served for less than three years, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Cook Political Report. It’s the least experienced House since at least 1995, when an election wave swept the Republicans into power.”

GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway told House Republicans at their retreat that they need to stop talking about rape, Politico reports.

“Conway dispensed the stern advice as part of a polling presentation she made alongside fellow GOP pollsters David Winston — an adviser to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — and Dave Sackett. The comment was described by several sources in the room.”

Businessweek suggests that banning earmarks is what caused the current Congressional gridlock.

“In the two years since, it’s done nothing but tie itself up with a supercommittee, a sequester, and continued promises to fix things in the future. Political hacks used to say pork was the political grease that lubricated legislative deals. Only now do we see how true that was. Would it really be so terrible to reintroduce some congressionally sanctioned bribery? That would let members lay claim to the odd million in the interest of striking a deal worth much more.”

The Cloakroom: The “Hastert rule” no longer governs the House.

Last night, the House passed legislation providing an additional $50 billion for Hurricane Sandy relief by a 241-180 vote.

But First Read points out “the real story is the vote breakdown: Only 49 Republicans voted for the measure — so just 20% of the caucus — while a whopping 179 Republicans voted against the measure. By comparison, 192 Democrats voted for the legislation, and just one (Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper) voted against.”

So for the second time in the last two weeks, we’ve seen the House pass legislation by violating the Hastert rule.

When freshman Rep. Ted Yoho’s (R-FL) wife, Carolyn, first looked at his 24-year-old chief of staff’s Facebook page, she “was led to believe the young lady was a stripper,” National Journal reports.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” He might also have said a house that cannot watch a movie together also might not stand.

Glenn Thrush reports that House Speaker John Boehner “has been by the White House for most holiday parties — and he played that legendary round of golf with POTUS a couple of years back — but he declined Obama’s invitation to screen ‘Lincoln.’ So did McConnell, along with Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME).”

“House Republicans have routinely turned down White House invites (as Democrats did under Obama’s predecessor), with the high point of bipartisan schmoozing being a sparsely attended 2011 BBQ Obama threw for newly-elected Republicans after the 2010 midterms.”

Even the newer lawmakers are taking part: “One Republican freshman who didn’t go was Rep. Renee Ellmers whose flack said, with admirable candor, ‘She declined because she chose not to go.'”

“There’s no way to defend what Todd Akin said. You just can’t do it, and you shouldn’t try to put it into a scientific context. It was a bad statement. And to try to defend it or explain someone else’s poor choice of words, it would be a fool’s errand.”

— Former Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), quoted by Politico, in response to Rep. Phil Gingrey’s  (R-GA) defense of former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO).

A new Gallup poll finds Congress began 2013 with a 14% approval rating.

“The lowest individual congressional job approval rating in Gallup’s history is 10%, measured in August of last year. The highest is 84%, measured in October 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

“We may have to shed blood every couple hundred years to preserve our freedoms.”

— Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), quoted by Chicago’s DNAinfo, adding that conservatives are losing the “war” with Democrats for U.S. voters.

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that Congress only has a 9% favorability rating with 85% of voters viewing it unfavorably.

Key finding: That’s less popular than cockroaches, traffic jams, root canals and even Nickelback.