Investors Business Daily today minces no words in an editorial on the national security implications of oil drilling restrictions.

Sens. John Sununu and John McCain are right to question America's reliance on foreign fuel. If barriers to U.S. drilling and nuclear power weren't so bad, we wouldn't see such oil—fueled menaces. This must change.

Right now, it's easier for big oil companies to drill in faraway places such as Nigeria, Russia and Iran than get a permit to drill in the U.S.

That's why we don't have many options when an unbalanced dictator such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez taunts his No. 1 customer as a "perverse, murderous, genocidal, immoral empire" and calls on the world's leftists to "bring it down" — as Chavez did last weekend.

He knows he has us over a barrel because our country is virtually off—limits to new drilling.

The entire editorial is equally direct, almost blunt in showing that the greenies have imperiled us with their endless obstacles in the way of new energy production. It combines flawless analysis with colorful insight of global energy politics.