That reality has already trimmed back the focus on the GOP Energy speeches on the House floor that lawmakers continued on Monday, as the knot of reporters paying attention to Republican House members grew smaller this week.

All you have to do is go to some of the websites of publications focused on Capitol Hill to get the answer.

"CongressDailyAM and CongressDailyPM will resume publication the week of Sept. 8, when the House and Senate are scheduled to reconvene," said one notice.

"The Hill newspaper will publish on Wednesday this week," said the scrolling banner of one Capitol Hill sheet.

Fewer reporters roaming the hallways mean fewer news stories being generated. And even if the GOP'ers were making solid news, they have a lot to contend with, like the daily drumbeat of news on the Olympics and the Russian-Georgian military conflict.

President Bush is back at the White House now for a few days, so his presence in town could give a boost to GOP Energy efforts. This afternoon, he will meet with the Coalition for Affordable Energy, so we'll certainly hear about the issue.

Once Mr. Bush heads to Texas and Barack Obama leaves Hawaii later this week though, then the focus will turn ever more to Vice Presidential choices and the conventions.

Energy will still be a big issue - don't get me wrong. But there's a lot more out there that is sucking up the news oxygen, especially now that gas prices are going down.

But even if the Republicans in Congress were making news, they might not know about it.

The cable TV systems on Capitol Hill are getting a full overhaul, so we can't even see CNN, Fox News or MSNBC. We do get CSPAN and CSPAN2.