So I made it pretty clear yesterday that I'm not really a fan of National Bike to Work Week. But guess who seems to like it even less than I do: The United States Congress, who today voted to stop filling the national petroleum reserves in order to make it easy for American consumers to drive their cars.

Quote-of-the-day honors go to Senator Byron Dongan (D-ND) for "When the American consumer is being burned at the stake by energy prices, the government ought not be carrying the wood." While doubtlessly not the intended meaning, the metaphor becomes unwittingly apt if you understand the wood to represent crude oil.

Much like a gas tax repeal, staunching the flow of oil to the strategic reserve is a quick-fix political expedient, the modest gains of which will almost certainly be swallowed by excessive consumer consumption on one end, and increasingly restricted supply from the OPEC cartel on the other.