Doug Ross @ Journal

Six dollars a gallon

Happy with gas prices now? Perhaps you should be:

...Imagine another terrorist attack — especially one on Saudi Arabian oil refineries, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey said Monday during a visit to Pittsburgh. If terrorists took out the sulfur-cleaning towers in northeastern Saudi Arabia, as described in the beginning of Robert Baer’s book, “Sleeping With the Devil,” crude oil prices could easily top $150 a barrel and stay there for more than a year, Woolsey said. A barrel of oil sold for about $73 yesterday, with gas prices in the United States hovering around $3 a gallon. Most Americans don’t want to think about paying double that.

And exactly how did we get in this situation?

Both parties have contributed to excessive fuel usage by failing to raise minimum fuel-efficiency standards and promoting gas-guzzling SUVs.

But it is the Democrats who have blocked the construction of new refineries for decades. As recently as yesterday, they decried legislation to speed refinery construction as "weakening environmental protections and [creating] new layers of bureaucracy."

It is the Democrats who have blocked offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico and in the outer continental shelf.

It is the Democrats who have blocked ANWR for over a decade (if Bill Clinton had permitted it then, oil would be flowing today). If all of ANWR were a football field, the drilling area represents less than the size of a postage stamp.

It is the Democrats who have blocked development of peaceful nuclear energy, despite new and safe ways to build reactors and treat waste.

It is the Democrats who have blocked even the construction of windmills!

No refineries? No offshore drilling? No ANWR? No nuclear energy? No windmills?

It is the Democrats' history of obstructionism that is responsible for our current energy prices.

Remember that the next time the Mediacrats howl about high gas prices, oil company profits, and the administration. Their obstructionism is the real cause, as clear as day.