Oil prices dropped over $10 a barrel on the trading market, just two weeks after President Bush lifted the 18-year-old executive ban on offshore drilling and exploration. We are still waiting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress to lift their ban.

We have 100 years' worth of recoverable oil shale deposits in Colorado. We have millions of barrels of oil that could be developed all across our fruited plains. China and Venezuela are exploring for oil in the Gulf coast and between Florida and Cuba. Russia is exploring for oil in the Arctic Circle. France is 80 percent nuclear.

Liberals and socialists put a high premium on copying Europe and the world community. Well, in this case why don't we? Why is the Democratic Congress standing in the way of lower gas prices for American families like the ones in Moore County? Why elect people who will increase the burden on us and our children to satisfy the rants of neo-socialists and enviro-communists?

Just the very mention of nuclear energy or clean coal or increased oil production brought prices down. Imagine what would happen if we actually pursued them. Vote for progress, vote Republican in November.

Joe Garrison, West End