Oil is trading at record highs, as futures for the last four months of the year have traded at more than $60 a barrel. Only the U.S. Congress could dither on about nothing while American troops are within a stone's throw of securing some of the world's most prolific oil reserves in Iraq. At the same time, America's families are being crushed under the weight of this energy crisis, since everything from food to durable goods will begin to cost more as the price of the fuel to haul these goods rises. It must just be that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, believes it is far more important for them to ignore President Bush's call for passage of legislation permitting U.S. energy companies to get busy looking for our own oil.

While congressional factions try to turn Gitmo from a molehill into Mount Everest, our southwestern borders remain porous sieves, leaking as badly as national security secrets during the Clinton administration. Worse, during the occasional lulls in Gitmo-bashing – when illegal immigration is instead the focus – most lawmakers take the open-borders, amnesty-for-all position on the issue, in complete disregard for their constituents, most of whom want better border security and far fewer migrants strolling into this country at will.

As energy prices drive up the cost of everything, real wages are either stagnant or declining, leading more Americans to work more jobs and longer hours so they can pay the mortgage on their ridiculously over-priced homes. When lawmakers aren't doing the Gitmo shuffle, they continue to ignore this economic disaster-in-waiting, only to find new and better ways to waste their time debating whether John Bolton should or should not be allowed to serve on a phony-baloney global panel.

As Dick Durbin burns precious oxygen by treasonously likening U.S. treatment of prisoners at Gitmo to dictator Pol Pot's horrendous killing spree of a third of his fellow Cambodians, U.S. troops continue to fight and die to protect his right to trash them in Iraq and Afghanistan.