About 75 percent of the crude oil marketed here is sold off the books, and they are doing trades that would be illegal if it was a regulated market, and of course they do not want to regulate it.

There is a lot of lip service paid in this Congress and downtown at the White House about family values and small business. Who better represents family values and small business than the fishermen and women on the Oregon and California coast.

The U.S. must renounce any U.S. interest in constructing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

To the contrary, I believe the U.S. military has already done all that has been asked of them. Saddam Hussein is on trial. The threat from alleged weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq has been neutralized.

A timeline for bringing U.S. troops home that is negotiated with the Iraqi government would also boost the Iraqi government's legitimacy and claim to self-rule, and force the Iraqi government to take responsibility for itself and its citizens.

But they are not going to take on Big Oil because Big Oil is very generous at campaign time, and this is all about the elections. They want to pretend that they are doing something meaningful.

The crude oil market, unlike every other commodity in America, is virtually unregulated.