Take Them To Court

Remember the original "The People's Court" in the 1980's with Judge Wapner? They were some of the early pioneers in reality television. I can clearly remember the shows host Doug Llewelyn's catch phrase. He would say; "Don't take the law into your own hands: you take 'em to court". The Federal Government plans to do just that. The House of Representatives passed legislation last week allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to manipulate oil prices. The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow. I say what the hell, Congress is not doing much else to help stem the rising cost of oil and oil related products. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, saying that such a measure will cause the oil producing nations to retaliate against us. The bill passed the House in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override Bush's veto. While I am not all that optimistic about the outcome, this bill is better than the whole lot of nothing that our lawmakers have been doing up there on the Hill recently. Come to think of it, we should check and see if Judge Wapner is available to hear the case.