For decades the Democrats, at the behest of environmentalist fanatics, have blocked construction and expansion of oil refineries, have blocked drilling for oil in ANWR, have blocked exploring and drilling for oil off the continental shelf. They have recently claimed that the oil companies should drill on acreage already allotted for drilling. The problem with that is that the oil companies have already studied the terrain and concluded it's not likely to be fruitful. The Democrats want them to drill anyway.

Willie Sutton, once asked why he robbed banks, supposedly replied, "Because that's where the money is." If Willie Sutton had been a modern-day Democrat, he would have robbed outhouses isntead.

Just as the Democrats want to fight al Qaeda everywhere but Iraq, they want the oil companies to look for oil everywhere but where it is.

So if the goal of the drilling is not to be to find oil, and if the prevention of drilling is expressly to prevent the finding and extraction of oil, what is the real purpose behind the Democratic position?

It is the same thing that's been behind most fanatic groups' schemes and complaints for the past 15 years. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Marxist groups that used to invest much effort and emotion into supporting the communism of the CCCP have migrated to other Marxist causes. Underlying the claimed causes of environmentalists, the AARP, NOW, and pretty much any radical group one can name is Marxism, the attack upon corporations and capitalism.

For example one hear's nothing, nada, no complaint at all, from the environmentalists when it comes to Venezuela's state-owned oil production and refineries, nor from Brazil's recent discovery of significant offshore oil, precisely because the environmentalists don't care a hoot about state-owned pollution. They will, if pressed, give a little lip service to it, but mostly they will make excuses for socialization of oil. If the Exxon Valdez had been owned by Hugo Chavez's oil companies, environmentalists would have concluded that a little oil on the water was good for the Arctic coastline, as it calmed the waves from the cyclones and hurricanes caused by global warming. You can bet on it.

Now we have Democrats talking about nationalizing oil refineries, and probably soon they will want to get their grubby mitts on the oil companies themselves. At which point you can expect all opposition to oil refineries and drilling to miraculously vanish from the political discourse.