> FROM INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY
>
> HEAD: Feckless To Reckless, Pelosi Should Resign
>
> Leadership: With oil hitting $147, Nancy Pelosi finally admits energy is a
> problem. But instead of drilling for it, she's cooked up a new
> drain-the-reserves scheme. It's pure politics at a time of crisis. She

> to resign.
>
> Any leader with an energy record as derelict as Speaker Pelosi's ought to
> step down. Where she once was just incompetent and irresponsible, she has
> now - with her latest scheme to fix oil prices - become dangerous.
>
> Despite polls showing Americans in favor of drilling more oil from

> huge untapped supplies, Pelosi won't allow it. She just wants to empty our
> Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short-term fix to get through Election
> Day.
>
> It's an irresponsible suggestion, signaling not only an ignorance of how

> economy works but also a willingness to place the nation at risk in the

> of emergency.
>
> Last Tuesday, Pelosi sent a letter to President Bush urging him to release

> "small portion" of the nation's 706 million barrels of strategic-reserve

> to bring down prices. Regardless of how one feels about whether reserves
> should be held at all, two big problems stand out with Pelosi's tiny

>
> One, she's proposing a misappropriation of the reserves. The U.S. oil
> stockpile is a 58-day cushion for emergencies that today are all possible.
> If Israel attacks Iran, for example, and prices double again. Or if Hugo
> Chavez cuts off his supplies, as he threatened to do as recently as

>
> The reserve is there to cushion the blow of a market disruption; it's not

> open-market mechanism to manipulate prices for political ends.
>
> Two, Pelosi has finally admitted that supply matters, something that
> contrasts with her entire legislative record. We count 14 energy actions

> suppress supply on her Web site just since 2005.
>
> She has blocked efforts to open Alaska to drilling, denounced fossil

> blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, voted for biotech

> and condemned speculators.
>
> "Our coasts need lasting protection from oil and gas drilling," she

> Dec. 6, 2006, after Democrats won control of Congress. Missing are any

> against petrotyrant regimes who drive prices skyward, or even lip service

> the idea of ensuring supply through drilling.
>
> Pelosi downplays her proposal as modest because it's a "small" portion of
> the reserves to spend. And look what happened in 2000, she says, when an

> release authorized by President Clinton lowered gasoline prices nearly

>
> But she's not fooling anyone. Then, like now, an election was coming up.
>
> With Congress' public approval at a subterranean 9%% and falling, the

> must be starting to realize that November may not be the Democratic

> that pundits predict.
>
> President Bush, however, isn't about to be suckered into releasing the
> reserves just long enough for pump prices to fall by Election Day, thereby
> saving Democrats' skins so they can carry on their drill-nothingism for an
> additional two years.
>
> The president needs to do two things with Pelosi's proposal: First, tell

> "no," unless she comes up with a plan to open up more drilling. Second,
> expose it for what it is - a bid to paint Bush as the problem to distract
> from her own sorry record.
>
> In playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the speaker has
> moved beyond the incompetence and irresponsibility that have characterized
> her leadership to date.
>
> It borders on reckless, something we cannot tolerate in such dangerous
> times.
> *********
> Always incompetent and irresponsible, and now dangerous...that's Crabs. If
> she doesn't quit, she should be impeached for treason.
>
> Dionysus
>
>