Today begins the final two months of the Democratic majority in the House, and the large majority in the Senate. So what do Democrats plan to do with that majority, as well as their 255-178 spread in the House? Not a heck of a lot. The lame duck session will be dominated by talk about what to do on the Bush tax cuts, but there are some other issues that are likely to get taken up as well.

It’s worth noting that there are enough “emergency” pieces of legislation to tide over a session that could be as small as three weeks (one week before Thanksgiving, and perhaps only two weeks after). Congress needs to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running. There are several pieces of legislation that expire on November 30, like extended unemployment benefits and the “doctor’s fix” for Medicare reimbursement rates. And then there are the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Clearly that doesn’t leave much room for energy, child nutrition, DADT, the DREAM Act, labor bills, a Chinese currency measure, the new START treaty or even the deficit commission recommendations, parts or all of which had been promised a vote in the lame duck.

If you want an example of the broken Senate, you could do worse than read Meredith Shiner’s story on the food safety bill. The background: A food safety bill has been bottled up in the Senate since last summer, when the House passed it. It has overwhelming support from both consumer groups and even industry. [...]

Seafood buyer Bruce Guerra, owner of Yscloskey Seafood, sums up the dilemma faced by everyone in his industry. If the state prohibits its summoned biologist from coming to test seafood about which everyone involved has questions, how can he be sure he’s buying — and selling — safe seafood?

The White House, the FDA and the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board are teaming up with a group of celebrity chefs to promote the eating of Gulf Seafood.

What should we REALLY learn from the egg recall. Well, I’ll tell ya…

Jon Cohn explores the egg recall in greater detail, and comes to a similar conclusion as I did: that it just shows a continuation of E. coli conservatism, particularly the fervor for deregulation that goes back 30 years

Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa, two Iowa-based dairy farms, have collectively recalled 550 million eggs due to a salmonella outbreak, the largest such recall in recent history. Both have close ties to Jack DeCoster, an agribusiness owner. Now, Rep. Rosa DeLauro wants to know more about DeCoster, and what federal regulators knew about them.

The House has already passed a landmark food safety bill. The Senate passed it out of committee. We’re closer than ever to food safety reform. Here’s what you need to know about it.

When we have the USDA and FDA, why are we still dying from the salmonella and risking brain damage from the mercury in contaminated food? How were industrial food megacorps and the Peanut Corporation of America able to get foodstuffs they knew were tainted past Federal food safety agencies?

The dirty little secret about America’s food safety agencies is that for decades leaders in both corporatist parties have been sacrificing our