Foxy Spokesman

"President Bush, responding to political pressure over the high price of gasoline, ordered the Justice Department today to investigate price gouging, halted deposits to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the summer, eased environmental rules and urged Congress to roll back tax incentives to energy companies," the Los Angeles Times reports.

"'The first thing to do is to make sure Americans are treated fairly at the gas pump,' said Bush. 'This administration is not going to tolerate manipulation.' . . .

"Despite today's drop in oil and gas prices, many industry observers said that the president's action would not have any significant, lasting impact."

Now, not surprisingly, everyone is writing about energy policy. National Review Editor Rich Lowry criticizes, among others, Republicans:

"The cackling oil executives have returned. They are the guys who sit around corporate boardrooms and decide how high the price of gas will be at the pump, rubbing their hands greedily and emitting squeals of Mephistophelean laughter all the while. These executives exist only in the imaginations of economic demagogues, but that doesn't make them seem any less real to Americans who are gripped by petroleum paranoia every time they don't like the price of gasoline. . . .

"The foolish conceit of our politics is that the oil market works only when prices go down. When the prices go up, it's a scandal. So Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Bill Frist -- showing either a dismaying attraction to the moronic or a desire to pretend to have such an attraction -- have called on President Bush to investigate price gouging by the oil companies.

"Maybe such an investigation will unravel a vast conspiracy of cackling executives, and the Federal Trade Commission will have to raid those corporate boardrooms to restore world crude-oil prices to their natural, low equilibrium. Such, at least, is the fevered dream of the petroleum paranoiacs."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is equally perturbed by the party it usually champions:

"Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election.

"Oil prices hit $75 a barrel last week, while gas has reached a national average of about $2.85 a gallon. The Republican response has been to put on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs and shout about corporate greed and market manipulation. House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fired off a letter to President Bush yesterday demanding the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department investigate 'price fixing' and 'gouging.' Senator Arlen Specter wants to go further and impose stricter 'antitrust' laws for oil companies, as well as a 'windfall profits' tax. Mr. Hastert also delighted the class warriors in the press corps by lambasting recently retired Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's pay 'unconscionable.' "

Hey, what's $400 million among friends?

"There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices--and the entire cause of recent spot shortages--is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress's friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012."