Good Monday morning. The Seahawks, Cowboys and Packers are going to the playoffs, and the Patriots covered a spread for the first time in three weeks. This year in the NFL seems so much more normal than the year in college football. Here's what Washington is chatting about this morning:

-- The Senate meets to continue debating the farm bill, though no votes will be taken today. The House meets in pro forma session as legislators begin to craft an omnibus spending bill. President Bush holds a Hanukkah reception tonight, while acting Agriculture Secretary Conner, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez, Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Paulson are all participating in the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing. Al Gore is in Oslo, Norway this morning where he is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

-- Democrats Tuesday will offer a $500 billion package of funding for the war in Iraq as well as domestic spending measures. House Republican leader John Boehner criticized the majority for holding war funding hostage on CNN's Late Edition, though he may have little choice but to go along: In exchange for domestic funding at levels of approximately $11 billion more than the president requested, Democrats will give the White House $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At some point, will the Democratic base get irritated that their new majority is still funding the war?

-- There's no denying it, Oprah Winfrey is officially a force in modern politics. In front of four huge crowds -- 18,500 in Des Moines, 8,500 in Manchester, 29,000 in Columbia and 10,000 in Cedar Rapids -- the mega-star pushed Barack Obama harder than any product she's ever backed. The size of her effect on the race will be evident when the next round of polls come out, but one Obama adviser, asked by Marc Ambinder to compare Winfrey to Hillary Clinton's use of Chelsea Clinton this weekend, probably made an appropriate comparison: "It's kind of like bringing a knife to a bazooka fight."

-- Rudy Giuliani faced a grilling on Meet The Press yesterday, but he seemed to get away largely intact. But how long until a journalist actually presses Giuliani on some of the questions he scooted away from yesterday? Whether it's his ongoing relationship with Giuliani Partners and some of its more questionable clients or his decision to provide security for then-girlfriend Judith Nathan, Giuliani did nothing to quell the queries he is sure to get during the rest of the campaign. Giuliani, though, can take solace in one thing: Mitt Romney is Russert's guest next week, as the LA Times points out.

-- And Republicans debated last night in Coral Gables, Florida, for the benefit of Univision. Addressing Hispanic voters in a partially Spanish-language debate, seven Republican candidates took a gentler tone on immigration, still promising to end illegal immigration while praising the immigrant spirit, as the New York Times writes. They took a softer tone with each other, as well: Candidates barely laid a glove on their rivals, as Jonathan Martin reports. Participating in the forum looked to be important for Republicans, who have seen their performance among Hispanic voters slip in successive elections. Still, the eventual GOP nominee will have more work to do before November, as Hispanics favor Democrats by a nearly two to one margin.

-- Likely to make a splash this week: The New Hampshire Union Leader reported Friday that state investigators are close to announcing something in the criminal probe of robo-calls that blasted Mitt Romney and boosted John McCain a few weeks ago. The culprit is likely an outside group loosely tied to one of the candidates, and whomever is implicated will have a difficult time in the next few weeks: Several top political reporters in the state are virtually campaign out near the Attorney General's office waiting for word to break, and any association with a push poll could bring a candidate down in actual polls.

-- Good news, by association, for Hillary Clinton: When women govern, they remain highly popular. A new survey out from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which seeks to elect more women to office, shows voters are more likely to see male governors as too partisan, while independent voters prefer female candidates. Can Team Clinton convert that into votes for president? After 2006, eleven women now serve as governors, the most in history. That number, though, will drop to ten when Louisiana Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal takes over for outgoing Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

-- Missing Persons Of The Day: What do the GOP front-runners all have in common? They've all spent long stretches of the two months before the Iowa caucuses away from the state. It took Mike Huckabee nearly a month to show up, which he did on December 3. Mitt Romney wasn't around for ten days (hardly a long stretch, but long for Romney). And Rudy Giuliani hasn't been seen since November 8, as the Chicago Tribune reports. Sure, they all have good reasons -- Huckabee capitalizing on his new support to raise much-needed cash, Romney focusing some efforts on New Hampshire, also an important state to his campaign, and Giuliani focusing on other states as he practically bypasses the early contests. Still, it says something about the GOP race: The calendar is getting longer, not shorter.

-- Today On The Trail: Obama is in Las Vegas before heading to Universal City, California. John Edwards begins a statewide bus tour in Des Moines, then holds a town hall meeting in Marshalltown. Joe Biden meets voters in Oelwein, Independence and Waterloo, Iowa, while Chris Dodd holds a town hall at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California and Bill Richardson gives a speech in Los Angeles. On the GOP side, Fred Thompson visits a museum in Miami, John McCain meets voters in North Augusta and holds events in Aiken and Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina and Rudy Giuliani meets voters in San Francisco.