Energy policy

Senate Democrats gave up this week on enacting a vast new energy tax dubbed "cap and trade" -- which had been justified as an attempt to fight "global warming," despite the lack of any convincing evidence that thus crippling America's energy-based economy would have changed global temperatures by a single degree.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said no Republican senator was willing to back the vast and costly scheme.

"It's easy to count to 60," Sen. Reid said Thursday. "I could do it by the time I was in eighth grade. My point is this, we know where we are. We know we don't have the votes."

It's tempting to say something witty about the latest, previously unknown disability against which Sen. Reid has had to struggle, if in fact he was 13 before he could first count to 60. But we'll pass.

Meantime, the Nevada Democrat said he was optimistic about a more limited measure, which would crack down on oil giant BP, boost energy efficient homes and provide incentives to convert many of the nation's large trucks from diesel fuel to natural gas.

"Number one, we're going to hold BP accountable to ensure that they clean up their mess," Sen. Reid said.

At the risk of seeming to "criticize everything," surely it's someone's job to point out that acts of Congress aimed at penalizing or punishing individual firms are constitutionally dubious at best -- the Congress set limits on liability in the legislation under which BP acquired its permit to drill from the Deepwater Horizon, presumably because encouraging the development of the resource was considered to be in the national interest. Nor are retroactive laws constitutional.

While fuel-use "incentives" are simply intended to override consumer decisions based on actual costs -- at a time when even President Obama says it's time to trim spending.

But at least the job-killing national energy tax known as "cap and trade" appears to be dead for now -- one "Sword of Damocles" removed from the array hanging over the heads of American businessmen, still paralyzed with fear to hire or invest again.

Thank goodness.