JUST WONDERING What will it take for the Dems to show some guts? BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

I’d like to e-mail every Democrat in Congress with the simple message, "Cat got your tongue?"

One has to wonder why these powerful people have been standing idly by, largely silent, for the last five years as George W. Bush has run roughshod over the country and the world. Though Hillary Clinton recently called W another Alfred E. Neuman, there have been no substantive challenges to the state of the nation under his reign. In politics, such silence usually means that the silent party (though it may be champing at the bit to sound off) is keeping its mouth shut because it may lose more than it will gain by speaking out.

The first brave soul to jump up and shout what we have known since Florida chads went hanging — that this emperor, in fact, is naked — would be a global hero. Yet Democrats seem to have neither the strategies nor the skills to stand up to Bush and his lackeys.

Only some very incriminating and/or embarrassing evidence of wrongdoing — or a severe lack of vision and leadership — could keep the minority party from making a more effective challenge. Perhaps the Republicans have a big room full of videotapes and photographs showing Democrats in compromising situations. After all, no one gets to Washington without brushing up against a few compromising situations along the way.

I can’t help but wonder what the Democrats are afraid of having us know. What would make them sit by and let the country go to hell just to keep us from finding out?

If I am wrong about all this, as I would hope, why won’t someone in Washington blow the whistle? One Republican apologist actually fumed that Hillary had "insulted the president" as if that were a federal crime. It isn’t, and those who are supposed to provide checks and balances ought to know that.

The economy is hitting the skids. Oil prices are sky high (and the Bush family profits from that). Most of the country now agrees that war is a disaster. London’s bombings prove that "homeland security" is nothing but a myth.

So what are they waiting for?

Memo to members of Congress: "Speak up — we can’t hear you!"