Don Briggs’ piece yesterday on the Davy Jones gas find off Louisiana’s southwest coast is certainly a hopeful one. McMoran’s discovery of between 2-6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with one exploratory well has opened up speculation that there may be a vast trend of oil and gas running offshore from the Davy Jones well all the way to the Jack deepwater find to the south, thus perhaps revitalizing Louisiana’s offshore oil industry and putting tens of thousands of our people to work in high-paying jobs.

Thank God this find was made on a field previously leased for development, because the as-yet undiscovered Davy Jones plays out there in areas currently not permitted for drilling won’t be available until someone new is in the White House. President Obama’s Energy Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he’s taking all new offshore drilling off the market for the duration of this administration’s term.

Two-thirds of the American people want new domestic drilling. The year Obama was elected we saw a massive grassroots movement in favor of domestic energy development. Gas prices are creeping back up into the $3 per gallon range, with the possibility they’ll go significantly higher this summer. Obama has lied and said he’d be willing to look at new drilling. And yet we have this.

The fact that our energy policy literally couldn’t be more destructive if we let the Saudis, Russians and Venezuelans write it is bad enough, and not completely Obama’s fault – our energy policy has been tantamount to treason for some time.

What’s worst about all this is the lying. Obama won’t even level with the American people on what his policy actually is. He dissembles and equivocates to put up a smoke screen, and then we find out after the fact that we’ve been lied to – he assured us we would get policies we would be happy with, and then gives us a reality much different than the advertised item. This has been the case on health care, on financial reform, on bailouts, on taxes – you name it, this man has pulled a bait-and-switch on it.

And now, offshore drilling. If anyone really believed this man would conduct a reasonable policy with respect to energy production that didn’t involve the necessity for government subsidies and redistribution of wealth, they weren’t much more than lemmings being led off a cliff.