Lame Ducks

The press has made a fairly big deal out of Nancy Pelosi's first 100 hours as Speaker of the House. Well, I'm all for looking foward, but we still have 3 weeks or so of a lame duck Congress in session. So Nancy's gonna hafta wait.

Speaking of lame - the Republicans are already starting to make things interesting. Trent Lott emerged from exile to announce that he will run for Senate Minority Whip, and Rudolph Guiliani is already active on the 2008 Presidential campaign trail.

The thing I'm most interested in,however, is the pending legislation that deals with free trade in Vietnam. So far, it looks like protectionism is going to prevail over open markets. Regardless of the legislation that is passed, I'd say that this is a symbolic event. As the war effort in Iraq approaches a change in strategy, the world gets to see how America reconciles with a former enemy.