Leading a veto-busting supermajority of Republican lawmakers, Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon would appear to have the cat by the tail.

Let's try to put some metrics on last Tuesday's historic election. Two years ago, the popular vote for House of Representatives was 54 percent Democratic and 43 percent Republican. That may sound close, but in historic perspective it's a landslide. Democrats didn't win the House popular vote in the South, as they did from the 1870s up through 1992. But they won a larger percentage in the 36 non-Southern states than -- well, as far as I can tell, than ever before.

Now that most of the dust has settled from Tuesday's midterm elections, Congress is starting to deal with issues that face Congress' two-legged, lame-duck session. The Reid/Pelosi-led Congress has scheduled the first leg of the lame-duck session to convene Nov. 15; the second leg will convene Nov. 29. The lame-duck session has so much legislation to consider, it’s hard to know where to begin.