During a hearing Thursday over the Fast and Furious scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder lit into Congressman Raul Labrador, after he displayed slides depicting statements Holder made about President Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich.

Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was given a heroes farewell when she entered the House chamber to submit her letter of resignation. The entire building erupted in a cacophony of applause for the outgoing Congresswoman, who was stepping down to continue her recovery.

One of the key strategies President Obama is utilizing in his reelection bid this year is to run against the “do-nothing Congress,” and on Fox News Sunday today, Chris Wallace asked House Speaker John Boehner to respond to that line of attack and the notion that Congress has been increasingly ineffective. Boehner argued that the focus of House Republicans over the past few months has been on job creation, and pointed to recent successes on the payroll tax cut and unemployment as evidence that Congress has been able to work with the president.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint responded to an assertion made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week on Meet the Press that the influence of the Tea Party has been dying down as the economy is slowly picking up steam. Reid claimed that Republicans are starting to realize the Tea Party is too radical and are trying to distance themselves from it, but DeMint argued that the movement is still going strong.

Jon Stewart went on the internet today and found, to his horror, that he would be forced to “go to the library, like a common masturbator”– Wikipedia was down. Why? The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA– the bill that proposes to shut down websites that allegedly help facilitate media piracy. Stewart gave his run-down of what SOPA was, how Congress was deliberating it, and, finally, interviewed one of its “victims.”

On Wednesday, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien invited Congressmen Chris Van Hollen (D – MD) and Tom Price (R – GA) onto the show to discuss the vote on whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

Rep. Ron Paul‘s detractors have raised many concerns about the longtime Congressman, but inconsistency has never been one of them. In fact, in old videos it sometimes appears that the Congressman raised issues that didn’t even exist yet– but would become a central part of his campaign. Take this short House speech from 1984, for example, in which Rep. Paul rails against “computer surveillance”– hardly an issue for most Americans at the time but, in a post-PATRIOT Act world, as important a theme as ever.

While most of the attention this week has been on the Iowa caucuses and development of the extended drama that has become the Republican primary, the GOP has taken some time to point out their disapproval of President Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “What kind of Monster… .com is he?” Jon Stewart asked, before noting that, not only are recess appointments common, the Senate wasn’t even in recess.

Rep. Barney Frank may find the 2012 Republican primary as wildly entertaining as most anyone else following the campaigns has, but he is still a little worried that the Democrats may suffer from this. This he told Lawrence O’Donnell on tonight’s The Last Word, where he explained that part of the blame for close-minded political rhetoric was voter demand, and that Democratic desire to cooperate has led to more gridlock in Congress.

One of the biggest conservative criticisms of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it has been too focused on protesting corporations and not focused enough on protesting Congress. Well, OWS protestors are now calling for a massive occupation of the National Mall when Congress returns from its winter recess on January 17th. The Occupy movement has been revitalized by recent outrages over the National Defense Authorization Act and the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act.

It’s fair to say that President Obama and Congressional Republicans have not had the best relationship over the past several years. Speaker of the House John Boehner has acknowledged in the past few months that while he still maintains a good relationship with the Commander-in-Chief, it has been getting “frosty” as of late. Some political analysts have predicted that because of Obama’s decreased popularity, running against an even more unpopular Congress could be a winning strategy in 2012.

The Senate, led my efforts from the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, may call on Twitter to ban accounts run by Taliban officers and supports in Afghanistan from disseminating anti-NATO information. According to the UK Telegraph, Sen. Lieberman– who worked to have al-Qaeda projects banned from Google as well– has contacted the social network’s leaders in an effort to remove accounts that promote and celebrate Taliban attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

This morning on Fox and Friends, a panel led by Brian Kilmeade discussed the payroll tax deal reached by Congress late Thursday. While the consensus was that John Boehner‘s job is safe — and Jon Bramick, a New Jersey lawyer, said that Boehner showed some impressive leadership skills — it was Dan Gerstein, a Democratic strategist, who stole the show, giving a concise, pointed statement on just how bad things have gotten in Congress.

In an implicit jab to President Obama, who returned a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill back to the UK in 2009 while Oval Office was undergoing remodeling, Speaker of the House John Boehner is bringing the statue back to Congress.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa disclosed in a letter sent Friday that four current members of Congress received special VIP loans through new-defunct mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.

Issa wrote to Rep. Jo Bonner, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, and Rep. Linda Sanchez, a ranking member within the Committee, alerting them to the existence of these undisclosed, below-market mortgage loans.

In the commentary portion of Face the Nation today, Bob Schieffer put forth a modest proposal for a new American government which ensures responsibility and accountability: a second Congress. Yes, it’s Congress 2: Electric Boogaloo, and unlike most sequels, this one shows more promise than the original. Schieffer’s desire to reform government comes from watching how divisive Congress has become in the last year.

Newt Gingrich has now put his crusade against judicial activism at the forefront of his presidential campaign. Over the past week, he has argued that if elected president, he would opt to ignore certain judicial rulings if he determines the decision is not within the authority of the court. He has been attacked by Constitutional scholars and lawyers over his position, and on Face The Nation today, Gingrich defended his position to Bob Schieffer.

During his Commentary segment on Face the Nation today, Bob Schieffer bemoaned the influence of money in politics and how members of Congress and lobbyists are gaming the system in order to make personal profit in sometimes questionable ways. Schieffer revealed that he is often asked why anyone would want to subject themselves to being part of a “mean” system when they run for political office. He argued that getting into a race means you automatically get lots of money, and even someone with little experience can amass a fortune in just a few shorts months on the campaign trail.

Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the House. And Nancy Pelosi also used to hold that title. And the similarities between the two don’t end there. Although embraced by their followers, they’re absolutely reviled by those with opposing views: The New York Divide congratulated Pelosi for making a “most corrupt” list three years in a row; the Star-Ledger called Gingrich “the sluttiest streetwalker on K Street.” And these are just the nice comments.

Bill O’Reilly did not spend much time on Rep. Barney Frank‘s retirement yesterday, but seemed to hold his strongest opinions for tonight, when he shared a segment with Charles Krauthammer on the Congressman’s legacy in Congress. While O’Reilly focused on Rep. Frank being “dishonest,” Krauthammer lamented his “self-righteousness” and proclaimed him “the face of the failure of American liberalism.”

Following news that Congressman Barney Frank would be retiring after 30 years of service in the US House of Representatives, Joe Walsh sent out a classy farewell letter snarky retort via Twitter, saying “Today Rep. Barney Frank announced he will not run for re-election & the Dow is up by almost 300 points. Coincidence?”

Barney Frank, the controversial Massachusetts congressman whose name will continue to be election-year fodder as co-author of the “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” is expected to announce on Monday, in Newton, Mass., that he will retire from politics and not seek re-election in 2012.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has no faith in the Tea Party’s ability to produce a president. This he noted today in a discussion with Christiane Amanpour on This Week, where he lamented the “very tense” tone currently in Washington and attributed some of that to the obstinacy of the Tea Party.

Who is Grover Norquist? The anti-tax personality has seemingly blown up into a Republican superstar/Democratic bogeyman out of nowhere, as some members of the committee blame his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, and the pledge many Republicans signed not to raise taxes for the committee’s failure. Norquist appeared on The Situation Room today in response to the super-committee’s failure and his alleged role in the affair, which he couldn’t help but call “sort of funny.”

The Congressional Super-Committee which rose out of last summer’s debt deadlock in Congress has a deadline approaching, and it appears nowhere near cutting a budget deal with hours to the deadline. With that in mind, both the Democratic and Republican chairs of the committee– Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, respectively–took to the Sunday talk show circuit to explain their impending failure, with Sen. Murray blaming Republicans for not having a mentality of “shared sacrifice” while Rep. Hensarling argued Democrats wanted to raise taxes exorbitantly.