Thanks for your response. The blood that has been spilled counts a lot, at least to me. I have family over there now and a cousin who was injured in Iraq as well who is back home now. IMHO what matters now is what we do going forward and that our country engages or disengages in a respectful intelligent way while protecting our interests both here and abroad.

It seems this week that a lot of people have made comments that were merely repeats of what Liberal Democratic Leadership has said without their own thought and research. To be fair the same thing has happened on the right too. I think it is incredibly important to the future of our country for all of us to understand exactly what we think and why we think it and not just be a bunch of sheep trying to bleat louder than the other sheep. Most of the people I talked with this week thought the American Energy Act was only about Drill Here Drill Now, and while it contains provisions for opening up our off shore areas for exploration, it also contains a lot of other things. Many of which Democrats have expressed support for.
I find it appalling that The House was adjourned earlier in the day than was expected because the GOP Congress Men & Women were speaking about this Bill.
We're on opposite sides of this one, but I want to thank you for your blog and your voice. You and Queen of Spain are my favorite liberal political bloggers to read because ya'll make me think. And if our country is to restore itself we all need to be thinking. And I think we all need to be reminded, at least I know I do, that people on both sides of this issue love our country and want what is best both for her and for our children.

Awww, now I need to apologize for the tone I took earlier. It actually had less to do with your comment and more to do with other, unrelated and entirely difficult interactions going on.

Truth be told, there is so much grandstanding going on with regard to both sides of this issue that it's difficult to sort out what's true from what's gamesmanship.

Truth: Offshore drilling puts lots of assets on oil company balance sheets that were not there before and shouldn't be there now.

Should the Congress have stayed in session? Let's think about it for a minute in political terms. Adjournment was scheduled for Friday, so the real question was whether Pelosi had the right to adjourn a few hours without addressing the issue.

Had she not adjourned, Culberson had indicated a call for an up or down vote on Drill Here, Drill Now (that was specifically what he wanted to address), which would have been political pay dirt for his side and made every Democrat in the Congress appear to be a buffoon.

Had the majorities been reversed, I believe the discussion would have been shut down in exactly the same way.

The fact is, no serious legislative activity is going to take place between now and the election. It's going to be a series of grandstand maneuvers on everyone's part, intended to raise heat with little light.

Godspeed to your family and Iraq and your injured cousin. My son was in the military (now discharged). While he didn't end up going to Iraq because he was in a unit not yet certified for deployment, he has friends who did, and who died. It's tragic all around.

I'm just curious if you've read the American Energy Act? Also what do you say to the other countries that already are drilling off of our shores where American companies want to drill? And are you aware that those 68 million acres everyone keeps going on about are either already in some stage of exploration, do not contain any drillable oil, or are in "limbo" because the environmentalists are seeking legal restriction against it?
For the immediate future we will have to get our oil from somewhere, would you rather it be American made or from the countries that hate us?

Momsintheright,

Actually, yes I have read it. And there are certainly areas that I agree with. However, that doesn't mean there's any immediate benefit at all to opening up these leases which were locked down by President GHW Bush. There isn't. The reports coming out of the Clinton AND current Bush administration discounted these leases as any sort of solution, given the time it would take to develop and build the platforms.

So that we're clear here, I firmly believe that everything that has been done in Iraq, Afghanistan and the current saber rattling in Iran are a Bush administration effort to control Middle East oil. Now that it has been met with moderate success on that front (e.g., granting big oil companies the right to build out and drill), there is no reason to rape our own natural resources.

The blood those kids spilled over there should count for something.

Beautiful.