(image: Fox News)

The new Republican-controlled 114th Congress gets up and running with the first formal order of business tomorrow the re-election of House Speaker John Boehner. But hold on… it looks like his third term may not be a formality, as conservatives Louis Gohmert of Texas (above) and Ted Yoho of Florida move to mount a symbolic challenge, egged on by a core of prominent hard-liners.

It’s just another distraction the GOP really doesn’t need as it attempts to demonstrate an ability to govern and is already dealing with fallout from previous associations of the #3 man on their House leadership team, Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise.

In presidential politics, after Jeb Bush fired the 2016 starting gun on the GOP side, other potential hopefuls have been galvanized into something resembling action. NJ governor Chris Christie went on sports radio to talk about hugging Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, while Mike Huckabee quit his Fox show in order to “consider” a presidential run, saying he would make a decision by the spring. The former Arkansas governor won the Republican caucus in Iowa in 2008, but knows he will have to raise some serious money for a serious run beyond the early primary states.

It may all get clearer after the traditional pre-presidential book tours start later this month. But if you’re expecting Conscience of a Conservative or Profiles in Courage, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with God, Guns, Grits and Gravy.

Another former Republican Governor in the spotlight is Virginia’s Bob McDonnell, who will be sentenced tomorrow after he and his wife were convicted in September on multiple counts of public corruption.

* WORLD *  The search resumes for the AirAsia airliner that went missing on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore. So far, 37 bodies have been recovered.

Tomorrow marks the 100th day in office for Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani who is still struggling to put together a government. His 2005 TED talk on ‘How to Rebuild a Broken State’ is here.

* BUSINESS * News that Morgan Stanley has said an employee was responsible for stealing the personal data of its wealth management clients made a couple of recent tangential stories in the New York Times all the more worth reading: In the magazine a few weeks ago, a piece on the Secret Life of Passwords looks at how companies survive a catastrophic failure of almost all their employees’ passwords at the same time, while How My Mom Got Hacked this weekend describes the disturbing growth of cyber-ransom.

The annual International Consumer Electronics Show – or CES – formally gets under way tomorrow in Las Vegas and online. Expect plenty of talk about the internet of things and, again, wearables. Here are the ’11 Coolest Things’ from Press Day, according to Wired’s Gadget Lab.

Oil prices continued to slide, with WTI dipping below $50 a barrel for the first time since 2009.

* CULTURE * Vinyl record sales were higher last year than in any year since 1993 with maybe some extra sales to come from “unknown artist” Paul McCartney, now that he has been discovered by Kanye West.

* MEDIA *  NYT reporter James Risen testified after being subpoenaed over sources in his 2006 book State of War. In other legal news, former CBS correspondent Sharyl Atkisson says she is suing the Justice Department over the alleged hacking of her computer.

The video CNN will play when the world ends is more than 30 years old and was just published on Jalopnik, in a piece by Michael Ballaban, a former intern at the network. In 1983, there was a Queen’s Speech script in preparation for the start of World War Three. But most impressive of all, we know how the media will cover the apocalypse, thanks to BuzzFeed.

* SPORTS *  The latest Baseball Hall of Fame class will be announced tomorrow, with the possibility of it being a bumper year for pitchers, with aces Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz all on the ballot.  But, predictably, controversy continues to surround the credibility of the process.

Finally, ESPN broadcaster Stuart  Scott passed away on Sunday at the infuriatingly young age of 49. It was a measure of his popularity that his admirers stretched from the nation’s couches all the way to the people’s house. President Obama said:

I will miss Stuart Scott. Twenty years ago, Stu helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays. For much of those twenty years, public service and campaigns have kept me from my family — but wherever I went, I could flip on the TV and Stu and his colleagues on SportsCenter were there. Over the years, he entertained us, and in the end, he inspired us — with courage and love.

He was, as his colleagues said in many tributes, a “new voice for a new time.”