One journalist remarked to me,

“How in the world can these senators

walk around here upright when

they have no backbone?”

— from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s February 5 New York Times Op-Ed article

Amphibians are vertebrates. This means,

although you may imagine otherwise,

that toads, though lumpy, do have spines,

unlike the human species we call toadies,

famous for their lack of backbone, as well

as for licking boots and presidential

bottoms, as evidenced, for fresh example,

by Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.