This from the Associated Press:

Oil prices neared $146 a barrel Thursday for the first time ever on reports of declining U.S. stockpiles and the threat of conflict with Iran.

Comments by Saudi Arabia’s oil minister suggesting his country had no immediate plans to boost production also lifted prices.

Expectations that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates later Thursday could further weaken the U.S. dollar and drive oil prices even higher, as investors turn to commodities as a hedge against a falling greenback, traders said.

You know, there is a bitter irony in America this week: We’re about to celebrate our Independence Day, when colonists declared that they would no longer be held under the thumb of an inattentive and unsympathetic Crown. But here we are, held under the thumb of inattentive and unsympathetic Middle Eastern oil barons and their supply whims.

This on top of comments from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah this week wherein the monarch basically told Americans concerned about the skyrocketing price of gas: Tough.

“Consumer countries have to adapt to the prices and the mechanisms of the market,” the king said in an interview published by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassah.

“We have nothing to do with the current sharp increase in crude prices,” he said reiterating the Saudi position that speculation, rising demand and the taxation of oil products in consumer countries were to blame.

“These countries must reduce their taxes on fuel ... if they want to contribute to easing the burden on ordinary consumers,” he said.

Ahem.

The Saudi king, who oversees the nation that is the WORLD’S NO. 1 EXPORTER OF OIL, telling the American government how to “ease the burden” on its citizens?

That guy has a lot of nerve.

Let’s just say he can take his advice and shove it. The American government should tell him so.

Our nation’s oil problem is not a partisan issue, and any elected official who treats it so should be thrown out on his ear. Our oil problem is a national security issue of the highest order. Oil is devastating our economy. Washington should get together and produce a bill by Labor Day that will not only begin to regulate oil prices—just as it regulates our utilities—and initiate any research or development that is necessary to make this nation energy independent in five years. We simply have no other choice.

And then we should tell the Saudi king that he just has to “adapt to the prices and the mechanisms of the market.”

In other words, America will no longer be held hostage by your oil.

Get used to it.