/var/log/messages permissions woes

[au516@freenet.carleton.ca]

Hello all,
This is a real mystery for me, and I need an answer to this problem:

As a regular user (not root) I want to be able to do a 'tail -f
/var/log/messages' whenever I dialup my ISP.  This is all set up fine
but there is a recurring permissions problem:  every time I reboot,
*something* changes the group permissions of /var/log/messages 
FROM:
-rw-r-----    1 root     adm        225523 May 18 13:15 /var/log/messages
                         ^^^
BACK TO:
-rw-r-----    1 root     root       225523 May 18 13:15 /var/log/messages
                         ^^^^
I chgrp back to adm, and something changes it back to root, etc.

I have looked through /etc/cron.daily and found nothing.  I have looked
through /etc/init.d shell scripts.  I have tried tracking the
permissions change through syslogd logging - all unsuccessful.  I cannot
seem to locate what mechanism is automatically changing this files
permissions.

Debian gurus - help?

R.