Every day I wake up and have to face my addiction: the smell of a fresh newspaper on my dining room table. Thomas is my enabler, as he is one of those wonderful morning people who gets up, showers, makes the coffee, gets the paper--all usually before I even regain consciousness. And for this, I punish him with some combination of snarling at the paper, reading the outrageous bits to him, and laughing much too loudly at the comics. He must have been very happy to be in Austin today.

Yesterday, Senator Russ Feingold announced that he was going to propose censure of President Bush for the NSA spying. And today, for the first time in, gosh, HOURS, the Democrats showed that they do not have the guts to stand up for what they believe in. They're backing away from him. All hot air. All counting the polls. But what if the American people just want someone to stand up and say what they really think, the political consequences be damned? I mean, holy crap! If, as many legal scholars believe, the authorization of the NSA spying on Americans in America was illegal and nothing is going to be done about it, what will it take? Where do we draw the line? A few years ago it was at sex in the Oval Office. And now? Now, nothing. The Democrats are too chicken-hearted (I'm trying really hard not to swear in this blog, just in case my mother-in-law is reading it) and the Republicans are too cowed to say anything. It makes me want to shake someone and tell them to grow the $%^& up and do the job you were sent there to do. If you can't speak up for what is right instead of always searching for the perfect soundbite, then get out. Go home.

Yes, yes, there are also Republicans who have mentioned that this might be illegal, but hey, lets just change the law so it's not a problem anymore. Does ANYONE think for a second that a Democrat in the Oval Office would be getting this kind of pass? Would be getting away with even a quarter of what this administration has over the past five years?