We won't drill, but Castro will.

Read it and weep.

Castro could drill off Florida coast

U.S. lawmakers aren't the only ones who, because of spiraling oil and gas prices and an unstable commodities market, have been studying the possibility of producing more domestic energy. Fidel Castro has also taken an interest, and his ambitions will, in a surprisingly short period of time, bring the Cuban drilling program much closer to the Florida coast.

Who can blame him? Castro has for years looked for new opportunities to develop his economy in the face of our trade embargo. He could only expect to rely on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's oil and gas giveaway for so long. So, with the intention of claiming billions of dollars in new revenues and reducing his country's dependence on foreign energy, Castro has taken to the high seas in an effort to acquire and produce as much oil and gas as he can.

But there's a rub: Cuba has neither the capacity nor the technical capability to produce this energy by itself. Castro has called in contractors from Canada, Spain, Norway -- even China -- to do it for him.

And not only has Cuba convened its own little United Nations to help get at vital and abundant supplies of offshore energy, it has chosen tracts of real estate in the Gulf of Mexico as close as 45 miles from Florida. Forty-five miles is just a bit farther than the distance between the University of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Imagine what Castro is thinking as we spend our time quarreling over whether we should produce American energy 100, 150 or 250 miles from the Florida coast while he makes arrangements to set up shop hundreds of miles closer. He must love that we've allowed emotion to win out over reason, facts to be dwarfed by fear and our nation's energy policy to be driven by unreasonable environmental concerns.

JOHN E. PETERSON, representative, 5th Congressional District, Penn.

So, what do you think of the possibility of China helping Cuba drill for oil 45 miles off our coast? I wonder if they will be overly concerned about spilling oil and messing up our pretty beaches?

---Katie

The View from Canada

Are we in trouble? Here is what one Canadian thinks:

Despite a variety of unparalleled challenges to American life and liberty, the direct result of eight years of irresponsible gross mismanagement under the panty-raid administration of the 90s, the Bush Administration has managed to prevent 911 follow-up attacks, liberated 24 million in Afghanistan from the brutality of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, another 25 million from the brutality of the Hussein Regime in Iraq, delivered the lowest unemployment rate and the highest home ownership rate, while leading the country to record numbers in the stock market. Yet the Administrations approval rating stands between 36 and 39%, according to the press. How is that possible?

Americans awake each day to a daily body count of soldiers lost in combat in Iraq. It’s usually the top headline of every paper, TV news show and NPR update throughout each day, for the last 1100 days in a row. There are no headlines of how many innocent Iraqi citizens didn’t die at the hand of Hussein, that would have had we not removed him from power. There are no reports of how many schools, hospitals, businesses and jobs have re-opened in Iraq. No stories about kids playing soccer in the streets with American soldiers, who once were imprisoned for their parent’s anti-Hussein views. Just a running body count, as if that tells the entire story, because that is the entire story for those seeking to regain political power by undermining any support for their opponents.


Click on the title. There's a lot more.

---Katie