Free Republic

While the media continues to blame the big oil companies for gouging U.S. motorists as they collect record breaking profits, the windfall profits raked in by the government in the form of energy tax revenue actually dwarf the oil companies' jackpot. The press sounded the alarm last year when the largest U.S. oil company, ExxonMobil Corp, announced profits of $36 billion. But according to the Tax Foundation, the biggest price gouging profiteer was the U.S. government, cashing in to the tune of $54 billion in oil and gas taxes. "Tax collections on the production and import of gasoline by state...

The killing in Darfur province of Sudan is terrible, but as a foreign policy problem it is also instructive. In particular, it is exposing the weakness of a strand of U.S. foreign-policy thinking that might be called the Pelosi Doctrine, after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Darfur is the Sudanese province where Arab Janjaweed militia supported by the Khartoum government has murdered an estimated 200,000 mostly black Muslims and displaced another two million. President Bush has requested $439 million in humanitarian aid, proposed a NATO mission to the area (an idea our European allies instantly shot down) and is now...