• Comedian Kathleen Madigan joins us in the Los Angeles Bureau for the entire show this morning to talk about the news of the day and promote her upcoming tour dates

• The Rude Pundit calls in at 9:30am ET / 6:30am PT to talk about what the GOP has done to get us into this sequester mess

• Charlie Pierce of Esquire’s Politics Blog calls in at 10:30am ET / 7:30am PT to talk about the political news of the day

• Republicans controlling the House are moving to take the roughest edges off across-the-board spending cuts that are just starting to take effect. A new GOP measure released Monday would give the Pentagon much-needed funding for readiness and would fund critical agencies like the FBI and the Border Patrol.

• A Senate committee is scheduled to vote on John Brennan, President Obama’s pick to lead the CIA, after weeks of wrangling with the White House over access to top-secret information about the use of lethal drone strikes and the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

• A Dominican woman who previously stated in a video that she was paid to have sex with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) now says the allegations were false, according to a sworn statement released by a lawyer on Monday.

• Chicago this morning finds itself in the midst of a storm that could wind up dumping as much as 10 inches of snow before the end of the day — the most since the 2011 blizzard.