"With gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, Bush and his Republican allies think Americans are more willing to allow drilling offshore and in an Alaska wildlife refuge that environmentalists have fought successfully for decades to protect. Nearly half the people surveyed by the Pew Research Center in late June said they now consider energy exploration and drilling more important than conservation, compared with a little over a third who felt that way only five months ago. The sharpest shift in attitude came among political liberals."

As 9/11 has proven, people ar so easily manipulated when frightened or, when their life savings is threatened. ( which is basically the same thing ) This government has learned so well how to use that in their favor. ( or, in Big Energies favor ) Those who are not so easily swayed by the current scare of the day are your true patriots.