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There'll be plenty of ruffled feathers. That's an easy prediction for and goes on, with breaks, until some time near Christmas. It is so called because it is not the new Congress that Americans elected a couple of weeks ago, with lots of fresh Republican faces, but the tail end of the old one

It will still be something a test of how President Barack Obama intends to govern in this new world, and of the mood of Democrats in the House of Representatives. Everybody agrees that an ambitious environment bill or a second stimulus package would be, well, a dead duck.

Mr Obama is . That may happen. Some Democrats , the so-called "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The most squawking will be caused by the and due to run out in the New Year. Democrats want to keep them for "the middle class" but not the "rich". Republicans say families earning over $250,000 a year are not rich, but small business.

But why ? It has come to refer to an individual, and by extension an institution, that will soon be out of office, and so lacks either moral authority or the ability to wield power because of expiring patronage and influence. But this aquatic avian used to . In 18th-Century England, it was a stock market term for investors who couldn't pay their debts. The image conjured is simply that of a wounded waddle, a rather pathetic sight.

But the original farmyard metaphor is simple. A lame duck, that can't keep up with the rest of its fellows, is the one most likely to be picked off by a fox. There's a fable for our times.

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