If a Senate study concluded that legislation signed by George W. Bush and supported by Halliburton was partially responsible for today's high oil and gas prices, do you think you would have heard about it?

Well, such a report was released by the Senate. However, the president that signed the law in question was William Jefferson Clinton, and the company that strongly lobbied for its passage was Enron. Yet, mysteriously, this study was almost completely ignored.

On June 26, Senators Norm Coleman (R—Minnesota) and Carl Levin (D—Michigan) released a comprehensive report detailing how speculation on various commodities exchanges around the world is impacting energy prices. Six weeks later, virtually no media coverage has been given to this bipartisan, 60—page study that should have been of great interest to Americans with gasoline over three dollars a gallon.

Even more curious than the lack of media attention to this report was its continued reference to Enron, a regular target of the press in the past five years. The Senate study strongly pointed an accusatory finger at 'The Enron Loophole,' a part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, approved by Congress and signed into law by former President Clinton on December 21, 2000.