For the second straight year, craft beer is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. alcoholic beverage industry. In 2005, craft beer experienced a 9 percent increase in volume, nearly triple that of the growth experienced in the wine and spirits industry.

The U.S. uses most of its oil for transportation. We can limit U.S. demand for oil by requiring automakers to use the technology that already exists to improve fuel economy - technology that the automakers refuse to bring into the market despite societal demand.

So the only way we're going to improve fuel economy or appliance efficiency swiftly and to the maximum extent practicable is if the government requires it.

Our oil problems are only going to get worse. Our trade balance is only going to get worse. So we have to slow the growth of U.S. oil consumption, particularly imported oil consumption.

First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.