. . . to renew the environmentally alarmist and economically and strategically reckless ban on outer-continenal-shelf drilling which expires September 30 unless Congress acts affirmatively to extend it? How low would a minority in Congress, guided by the harmful anti-energy “environmentalist” lobby, go to continue the moratorium on exploration and production of domestic energy sources?

Someone involved in the effort to avoid such inanity informs me that “there may be a move to put the extension in the Veterans approps bill [this] week”. That is, they would condition spending on veterans upon acceptance of a new prohibition on tapping estimated massive reserves of our own oil and gas.

That is what, politically speaking, is called “must-pass” legislation in an election year where Republicans — especially given how they are defending far more Senate seats than Democrats – really want to get home to campaign. And with no Congress to send the bill back to, President would likely sign the measure, so the thinking goes.

This ploy is made necessary by the Democratic leadership’s refusal to allow an up-or-down vote on drilling, because they know it would pass. As noted previously, they are even holding up the relevant spending legislation because of this majority support for drilling. Now, of course, they are looking for backdoors or kitchen windows through which to quietly sneak a brand new prohibition, as the voters sharpen their pitchforks over $4 gasoline.

In any other context this would be called what it is, a disgrace. In Washington, where shame is a rare commodity, it is simply cynical or, no doubt according to the establishment press if it comes to fruition, “politically savvy” or “hardball.”

Of course, this move also begs all sorts of questions about the claim advanced by the very same folks behind this maneuver, that our veterans are supposedly returning from a war for oil. In a way I suppose this makes sense according to their own – for lack of a better word — logic, ensuring that more veterans will require more appropriations given our arrogant refusal to tap our own domestic resources. So why not tie the issues together in the same legislative package?