Like a young boy who's the new kid at school, George W. Bush probably has no idea what to expect as he starts life with a new, Democratic Congress today. Facing a crew fronted by new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Bush will have to deal with a Congress intent on the actual work of governing, like passing meaningful legislation, scrutinizing judicial nominees and, most frightening of all for Team Bush, actually fulfilling their role in performing oversight on the executive branch of government.
In the Senate, things will start out this morning with a joint, all-Senators meeting in the Old Senate Chamber before officially opening the 110th Congress at noon.
Fear not partisan Democrats: I interviewed Harry Reid last month and, while he says this "bipartisan caucus" is intended to foster a "new tone" in the Senate, there was no mistaking a look in his eye that said he has had enough of Republican games and is committed to governing in a way true to Democratic ideals.
Before the 2006 election, many of us believed Bush and Rove would find a way to steal it - by disenfranchising Democratic voters, rigging the machines, demonizing our candidates, starting a war, or all of the above.
Of all the nauseating tactics used by the Republican party in the 2006, midterm election campaign, one of the more galling was their continued insistence that Democrats had "no plan" for national security. To provide cover for that bogus claim, the Senate's GOP leadership made damn sure that, on September 13, 2006, they killed 528 pages of a national-security blueprint, proposed by Democrats, called the 