5-Day Work Week

This is welcome news. It's become a kind of tradition to close the Congress in January so everyone can sleep off their Christmas/New Year's hangovers. Not this year.

The carping inside the Beltway about Nancy Pelosi has been undeserved and downright catty. But I think the simple fact that she'll force the Congress to show up for work five days a week, twelve months a year, will be potent out in the country. With all of the challenges we face both domestically and abroad, Congress worked between 90 and 100 days this year. That's unconscionable.

Harry Reid has also said that he'll be holding votes on Mondays and Fridays, as opposed to the Tuesday-to-Thursday schedule favored by Republicans. People are going to see something very different come 2007: a government that works. Literally.