Below The Beltway

Apparently, they want to send in the lawyers:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

No, it’s a pointless vote that won’t accomplish anything. For one thing, what right does the United States have to subject foreign nations to American anti-trust laws ? And what makes Congress think that any ruling that was issued by an American Court would be anything other than a piece of paper to OPEC or any of it’s members ?

Here’s the text of the legislation in question, and a list of the total morons who voted for it.

Incidentally, there is similar legislation in the Senate that would require the United States to pursue a claim against OPEC before the World Trade Organization.

And, frankly, I’d be careful about bringing the lawyers into this because there might be claims that can be made against the United States:

The US is the only country I know of that has, by statute, made illegal the development of enormous domestic reserves. Just last week, Democracts in Congress, in fact the exact same folks sponsoring this bill, voted to continue an effective moratorium on US oil shale development. No country in the world is doing less to develop the most promising oil reserves than is the US.

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The US is the only country I know of that has, by statute, made illegal the development of enormous domestic reserves. Just last week, Democracts in Congress, in fact the exact same folks sponsoring this bill, voted to continue an effective moratorium on US oil shale development. No country in the world is doing less to develop the most promising oil reserves than is the US.

Who knows what could happen when you get the lawyers involved.

H/T: Coyote Blog and QandO