Obama administration renews drilling ban. Of course it did.

Contra the Washington Post, the seven-year moratorium on new Atlantic, Pacific, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico oil drilling that will be announced today does not particularly mean that we’re going to allow new drilling in any of the other areas available to us, either*.  It merely means that these were the bans that the administration had to get on with right now before an annoyed Republican-controlled House – and a deeply frightened Democrat-controlled Senate – started asking pointed questions.  Well, one question, really: Why are we making suboptimal domestic policy decisions based on the belief structure of a very strange, and frankly not very pleasant, fringe religion?

Well, all right, we know the reason: it’s because the Greenies are always two short steps away from painting themselves with hallucinogenic moss and going out to firebomb a bulldozer for Mother Gaia.  It’d still be nice to see a little more secularism in this administration, and a good deal less fuzzy thinking.  But I shouldn’t complain: having gas prices go through the roof in 2012 will likely have a different, and much more satisfying, political result in 2012 than it did in 2008…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*The rest of the Gulf and the Arctic region.