Any time the price of oil goes up, politicians in Washington in both major political parties start getting itchy. For the Democrats, the rote response is always to raise taxes on energy companies and encourage federal bureaucrats to substitute their "wisdom" for that of the market.
The latest illustration of the latter came today as a group of Democrats in the Senate encouraged the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to intervene to prevent what they described as "unwarranted" price increases in the oil market.
“Speculators are seizing on recent political turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East to drive energy prices to unwarranted levels,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL and a dozen other Democratic senators, including Maria Cantwell, Washington, Barbara Boxer, California, Al Franken, Minnesota, Jeff Merkley, Oregon, Patty Murray, Washington, Robert Menendez, New Jersey, Mark Begich, Alaska, John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia, Carl Levin, Michigan, Barbara Mikulski, Maryland, Sherrod Brown, Ohio, and Bernie Sanders, Vermont.
 So, since these senators claim to know what are "unwarranted" prices, they must also know what are "warranted" prices. Otherwise, they are simply pulling their answers out of their .... hats. The Examiner will be asking each of these worthies how they arrived at "warranted" and "unwarranted" prices for oil in the oil most volatile market anybody has seen in decades.