#21 Michelle Malkin's blog has a whole lot of letters people have sent to their Reps about this.
Summary: People are pissed off.
One example:
Speaker Hastert,
I am frankly appalled at your cowardly actions this morning. For years, our country has been dependent on foreign sources of oil; and as Katrina and Rita so aptly demonstrated, the vast majority of the country's refineries are located in one geographical region. Why, then, would anyone stand in the way of developing a new source of oil, in a new location?
The environmentalists' complaints are, quite frankly, bunk. First of all, drilling techniques are so advanced that drilling in ANWR will require, if I recall correctly, roughly 0.1% of the land, leaving 99.9% of it untouched. In addition, there is no guarantee that drilling will even harm the caribou; the population near Prudhoe Bay actually increased significantly after drilling began there.
Even if the caribou were harmed, Mr. Hastert, I must ask you: what's more important to you? Helping America become less dependent on foreign sources of oil and geographically diversifying America's own oil production, or caribou?
That should be an easy question to answer.
Mr. Hastert, I am furious. This country is perilously close to needing a new party - a Conservative Party - because all we have is Democrats who call themselves Republicans and radical leftists who call themselves Democrats. I am far from being the only person who is questioning why we even vote. Why should we put Republicans in the majority when they won't advance conservative principles?
And here's a hint, Mr. Hastert, in case you couldn't figure it out: America is far more important than caribou.
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A proposal to allow oil and gas drilling within 125 miles of the Florida Gulf Coast died in the U.S. House late Wednesday night, a victim of the budget-cutting battle raging there. Republican House leaders abandoned an attempt to push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling. They feared that the controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would jeopardize today's approval of a sweeping $54 billion budget-cutting bill.