Okay, then. From the looks of things, the president wants the lame-duck Congress to ram through as much legislation as humanly possible over the next few weeks, while Republicans still control the House and the Senate:

THE PRESIDENT: ... First order of business is for Congress to complete the work on the federal spending bills for this year, with strong fiscal discipline, and without diminishing our capacity to fight the war on terror.

Another important priority in the war on terror is for the Congress to pass the Terrorist Surveillance Act. We also need to pass the bipartisan energy legislation that's now before Congress. And on the foreign policy front, we need to complete the work on legislation that will allow us to cooperate with India on civilian nuclear technology and pass trade legislation that will enable us to recognize Vietnam as a member of the WTO.

That's right--voters thoroughly reject their Republican overlords at the polls and those overlords get... a few more months to pass all the bills they can, without fear of retribution. Needless to say, a large number of outgoing politicians who will vote for, say, that "bipartisan energy legislation" (read: corporate bonanza) will never face any sort of accountability for their vote, save, of course, for whatever lobbying jobs await them when they leave. Whatever else one wants to say about the Constitution, surely the provision for a long lame-duck session is its most senseless feature.