The boys and girls of the Senate are taking this week off, of course.

I wonder, though, whether Brer Reid is using his leisure to contemplate what the Dem response will be if (more likely, when) the GOP decide to get the Feingold res back onto the floor.

I can understand why they didn't try before the break: corporate welfare comes before partisan games! But I'm pretty sure they'll be able to find a slot in their schedule when they get back.

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I was inclined to think its chances of so doing were absolutely zilch.

Esteemed lefty blogger Glenn Greenwald, however, takes Kevin Drum to task for making a similar assumption. And other stuff.

He suggests that

If the public became convinced as part of the debate that is finally happening that the President broke the law and that such law-breaking is intolerable, does Kevin actually think that it's impossible to find 6 Republican Senators to vote for the Resolution? Congressional Republicans defied Bush on the port deal for only one reason: because public opinion demanded it.

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Apart from the Congressional GOP, it seems the Feingold fracas has been giving the ya-yas in profusion to the gentlemen of the press.

Especially resident Post funny man Dana Milbank.

After cataloguing a slew of Senate Dems who got publicity-shy overnight, he says

The one Democrat happy to talk was Feingold, who, in a pre-lunch chat with reporters, seemed to enjoy his colleagues' squirms. "I'm concerned about the approach Democrats are taking, which is too often cowering," he said.

Damn that editorializing son of a bitch!

Of course, if the Dems decide that an extended bout of intra-party all-in mud-wrestling on the Capitol lawn is perhaps not the way to win friends and influence voters, this whole thing could be wrapping fish by Friday at the latest.

Otherwise...

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Raw Story has a piece suggesting that the feathers of a number of plumed knights of the Senate on the Dem side of the aisle have been well and truly ruffled by Feingold's censure res and - most particularly - by the way he went (or is supposed to have gone) about introducing it.

The piece quotes several staffers anonymously knifing Feingold - and Feingold hitting back on the record:

I'm amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president's numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide...too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they'll say we'd better just focus on domestic issues...[Democrats shouldn't] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question administration, you're helping the terrorists.

A lot of dust needs to settle before one can start to sort this one out, I think. Jumping to conclusions unwise.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Senate Democratic cloakroom...

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I don't like to say I told you so. But I told you so.

AP rounds up the day's (in)action from the Dem side:

Throughout the day, Feingold's fellow Democrats said they understood his frustration but they held back overt support for the resolution.

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