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One of the odder outbreaks among Republicans and those yearning to drill for oil here, there and everywhere is a recently created urban legend (first released by that noted guardian of the truth, Dick Cheney) that China is drilling for oil off the coast for Cuba -- as though that should make it ok to drill for oil in Alaska and off the coast of Florida, California, and hey, why not New Hampshire and Maine? A handful of nitwit GOP congressional candidates jumped on the fable even after Cheney revised his remarks (ah, not so true) and Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said flat out it wasn't true.

Well, our own Sen. John Sununu has jumped onto the fantasy train and come up with a new variation -- he told a Dover radio station that maybe not so much the Chinese but the Cubans are drilling away in their own waters so why can't we. How poverty-laden Cuba could afford to jump into the oil exploration business is an inconvenient fact (and likely news to the CIA) but hey, it fits in with the let's drill away solution to chop down your high gas prices. This comes some three weeks after Sununu who has publicly prided himself for being an "independent voice" for the state and not a rubber stamp for the Bush/Cheney cartel, parroted Cheney's line perfectly when he said "China is drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida, and the extreme, left-wing environmental groups will not allow us to do the same." He was called on it by the NH Dems but he's resilient and has a new story to tell. It must be an election year.