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Republicans finally have a winning argument on a big issue, and they'd better make the most of it. It starts with high gasoline prices–the single most infuriating issue to voters these days–but doesn't end there.

WHAT IS a "reasonable" corporate profiit? Is it 8 percent, 16 percent, 25 percent? What profit is unreasonable? Don't know? The Democratic majority in Congress thinks it does. And that should scare everyone.

The collapse last week of the Lieberman-Warner bill, the enviro-Left’s attempt to bribe Senators to impose energy rationing on the nation, shows that we are now left with only two energy-policy choices: We can adopt fudging issues as a policy, which will achieve nothing, hurt many, and satisfy no one; or we can pursue a free-market policy that will anger green activists and alarmists but actually do some good. Chances are that fudge is on the menu.

US President George W Bush will ask the European Union to make a global deal on climate change dependent on the inclusion of rapidly developing nations such as India and China when he meets top EU officials in Slovenia, a US diplomat said Monday. "We do hope that there can be progress on getting the advanced emerging economies to commit to reductions (of CO2 levels) – not at the same level of Europe or the United States, but some," said C Boyden Gray, the US envoy to the European bloc, ahead of Tuesday's EU-US summit.

For months, Democrats and the environmental lobby promoted last week's Senate global-warming debate as a political watershed. It was going to be the historic turning point in U.S. climate change policy. In the event, their bill collapsed in a little more than three days.

On Friday morning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced a cloture vote to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner “climate tax” bill. He needed to stop the political bleeding among his caucus caused by their enthusiastic promotion of the measure at the time when public attention to gasoline prices is intense and angry.  Gasoline prices have increased at least $1.66 since the Democrats won the majority.

Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up, and — while complaining profusely — keep driving like crazy. At $4, it is a world transformed. Americans become rational creatures. Mass transit ridership is at a 50-year high. Driving is down 4 percent. (Any U.S. decline is something close to a miracle.) Hybrids and compacts are flying off the lots. SUV sales are in free fall.

If this week's Senate debate on a proposed cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for climate legislation, things are not looking too good for opening night.