Republican ire? You gotta love it!

The GOP leadership in the House is stirring things up on energy independence, and I'm loving it. There hasn't been a signature issue on which Congressional Republicans have turned on the megaphone from the high ground in a long while, and, with 72% of Americans saying that prices at the pump are the biggest problem facing the economy, it's about time that they do take a strong stand. More than 50 Republican members of the House stayed after hours on Friday in protest of the 5-week adjournment, and many are coming back to Capitol Hill today. Check out the GOP's open letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:

An Open Letter to Speaker Pelosi

On Friday August 1, 2008, at 11:23 a.m., your Democrat majority in the House of Representatives adjourned the House for five full weeks.

House Republicans believe that Congress should not go on vacation until we take action to lower gas and energy prices for struggling American families.

For the last two months we and our House Republican colleagues have used every tool at our disposal to try and get you and your Democrat majority to vote on legislation to lower gas and energy prices by expanding environmentally sound domestic production of oil and natural gas, improving energy efficiency, and encouraging the development of alternative energy technologies.

Many of the proposals we have asked you and your Democrat majority to allow us to vote on are bipartisan proposals that we believe would enjoy the support of a majority of the Members of the Congress. Yet because you and your Democrat Leadership personally oppose these proposals, you are not allowing them to come up for a vote. This past Sunday, you even told George Stephanopoulos that you will never allow this vote to occur ….

In protest of you and your Democrat majority not allowing an up or down vote on producing more American energy, we and our House Republican colleagues were prepared to take to the floor on Friday, August 1, 2008, and speak to the nation. Rather than allowing that to happen you and your Democrat majority adjourned the House, turned off the television cameras, shut off the microphones and turned out the lights. Nearly 50 House Republicans remained on the floor of the House in defiance speaking to those citizens gathered in the galleries and to the media.

Today we have again returned to the Capitol to continue speaking to the thousands of Americans from all across our country who are visiting the Capitol. We would have preferred if instead we were joined by our colleagues to have a true debate on this issue that ended in an up or down vote.

We think it is unconscionable that Congress has gone on vacation before we have addressed the high gas prices that are crippling our economy and hurting millions of families. We are asking that you reconvene the House from your five-week vacation and schedule a vote on legislation to increase American energy production. Let us be clear, we are not asking for a guaranteed outcome, just the chance to vote.

Signed by: John Boehner, Republican Leader; Roy Blunt, Republican Whip; Adam Putnam, Republican Conference Chairman; Eric Cantor, Chief Deputy Whip; and Members of the House Republican Conference

Pelosi and the purse-lipped House Democratic leaders must be enjoying their vacation immensely, knowing that the people of south Alabama are only having to pay $3.75, as opposed to $3.99. Remember when I said that the gods may, in fact, be listening to our human plight at the pump? It seems that the god of the House gavel is not. 3 years ago, I would have expected the Republican majority to take a vacation with pressing issues on the table, and now we see the Democrats free for 5 weeks to take afternoon drives and fly private jets, paying for gas with their pocket change while the average American travels to the grocery store on his life-savings.

I suppose ineptitude comes in red and blue.
J. Sutton