The sheer magnitude of the Tea Party tsunami that roared through Washington last week posits the existence of an active, motivated conservative electoral base. Without a doubt, this base will continue to engage itself in rolling back the entrenched positions of the liberals and progressives in government, business, and popular culture. The Tea Party re-generation seems unlikely to shrug its shoulders and suffer in silence while ideas and values that undermine traditional America are flaunted.

That said, the primary importance of a vigorous, healthy American oil industry is essential to achieving energy independence and maintaining American freedom. I would wager there are very few Tea Partiers driving electric cars home to solar-paneled houses. I believe it's time, therefore, that Americans get behind the oil industry and petition our elected representatives to do something about the absurd level of red-tape and smoke thrown up by leftists every time an oil company wants to drill for more of the one natural resource Americans need most:

Texas Tea.

The anti-oil blockade over the last 20 years has metastasized from hippie protesters to federal bureaucrats to liberally appointed judges to the point that no potential oil producer can even begin to drill for new sources of oil without suffering through literally years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not milions) in legal fees. I say its time to free the oil industry, drill there, drill now!

It's not like we're facing an army of brain surgeons on the other side. We need to stop pretending that we are all chicken-little Al Gores out here, gone all touchy-feely with idiot compassion for the planet and address the continued liberal obstruction of our access to more abundant and cheaper oil.

In Anchorage today, a public hearing is taking place regarding oil leases purchased by Shell Oil (and others) from the U.S. Minerals Management Service for the right to drill in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. Our desperate-for-cash government accepted 2.7 billion dollars from the oil companies, but drilling has been blocked by "legal and regulatory challenges including a lawsuit over the sale."

I'm sure the oil companies have their best attorneys on the case. They will be facing a motley assortment of environmentalists, Alaskan native groups and, just to give their side some gravitas, Ted Danson.

That's right, Whoopi Goldberg's old boyfriend. I'm sure the enviros took Danson's decision to appear in blackface at a Friar's Club roast for Goldberg into consideration when evaluating his good judgment and mien. Ted sits on the board of Oceana, one of the enviro-pests driving the oil blockade. The other board members are either free-booting lawyers, women with too many hyphenated names, actors or other layabouts who are apparently incapable of holding a real job.

As for the Alaskan native groups, they comprise about 15% of the total Alaskan population of 698,473, for a total of 100,000 people. Why should 100,000 indigenous people dictate economic hardship for the other 300 million of us?

A recent article by the Indigenous Environmental Network quotes Jack Schaefer, President of the Native Village of Point Hope: "We've hunted and fished in the ocean since time immemorial. We've always believed that we own the ocean and that it is our garden. We can't afford to stop our religious, cultural and subsistence activities that depend on the ocean.

So the environmental circus is in Anchorage today. We're all waiting to see if Ted Danson shows up in Eskimo-face. As members in good standing of the American Tea Party, we need to run this circus permanently out of business and get back to the business of America doing business.

Ralph Alter is a regular contributor to American Thinker.