Totally Chicken****

After attending an anti-war rally last night, conveniently located outside my door, I was wrenched back into reality.

During the holidays, President Bush put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at 30 thousand. A John Hopkins study and others had already put those deaths at 100 thousand to 180 thousand. There are other reports of 300 to 500 thousand civilian deaths attributable to the war. The total of maimed and wounded are anyone's guess. We could expect President Bush to low ball the estimate. He is who he is. What you see is precisely what you get.

But what of the Democrats in Congress? What you see and hear from that group is not what you get. After Congressman Murtha's stand against the war in the Fall, you might have suspected some Democrats in Congress to jump on the train, especially with President Bush's approval ratings dropping to Nixon era lows. History now shows that the proposition is at least 10-1 against the Democrats in Congress coming out vocally for withdrawing from the war.

Since it is Sunday morning, and I am in a reasonably affable and gregarious mood, I will call the Congressional Democratic position, across a whole spectrum of issues, chickenshit.

Russ Feingold's attempt to muster Democratic support in Congress to censure President Bush for illegal domestic spying has fallen on ears attached to heads not supported by backbones. This comes after the ABA overwhelming pronounced the activity illegal and published a public statement, and while public sentiment was running against domestic spying.

Many Conservatives have been defecting from the pro-war camp recently, or at least expressing grave concerns about the way the war is going. However, the Democrats in Congress, most of them pro-war, remain as isolated as their fellow Congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration.

We apparently have one party rule in this country. Those who express their disapproval of Bush Administration policies, incompetence, and corruption have no one to turn to in Congress, except a few souls who speak out every now and then about an issue such as Murtha and Feingold.

Let's call what it is: chickenshit.