Energy is too important to be left to businessmen and markets, right? We need people who we really can trust to get things under control.

I am so excited by Barack Obama's new politics. Like Chris Matthews, I got a thrill down my leg when the senator announced his candidacy promising a "new kind of politics." As I recall, he said, "Our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first." Goosebumps!

Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

From the Washington Post, Friday, June 20:

Barack Obama isn't abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it's in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn't about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he'd get if he stuck to his promise -- and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Joel Stein

"Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less"

Rarely has so much hectoring produced so little.

The following editorial appeared in the Kansas City Star on Friday, April 11:

Failures by airlines and the Bush administration have inconvenienced and stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers. These travelers have every right to be angry, and to expect much better from Washington and the airline industry in the future.