Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years they were all closed for economic reasons mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections.

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

For centuries the death penalty often accompanied by barbarous refinements has been trying to hold crime in check yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not as the law claims constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

We were astonished by the beauty and refinement of the art displayed by the objects surpassing all we could have imagined - the impression was overwhelming.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization it is the best part of refinement and in many ways an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.