This happened on Tuesday January 6th, but I was still sitting at the pool bar in Cancun so I'm just now getting to it. This is the 111th time that Congress has convened since the ratification of the Constitution (click here for information on the First Congress).
The first order of business for the House was to select its Speaker, which as is customary was the leader of the majority party, which happens to be Nancy Pelosi. The minority party nominated its leader, John Boehner, who came in second.
In the Senate, the president of the Senate--who also happens to be the Vice President in the Executive Branch, counted the electoral votes and discovered that one of the Senators from the previous Congress, a man with the unlikely name of Barack Hussein Obama, was elected president. Who knew?
The Senate is still somewhat in flux, and will not have all its members seated for a while. I'll fill in details about the strange case of Roland Burris later.
