Nation: Congress: The Session in Between

IT was like a train station at summer's end. There were the happy arrivals, trying to find a place to put their things. There were departures, some of them happy, some sad, some uncertain. There were comrades reunited. There was one man who arrived early, and there was one who refused to believe that he had to leave at all.

The occasion was the first full lame-duck session of Congress in 20 years, a meeting that will last until just before Christmas or, in Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott's wry prophecy, until "we reach the...