You may have noticed gasoline prices are rising. If the Middle East situation gets much worse, gasoline prices will rise even more. The good news is that we are likely to avoid long gas lines as we had in the late 1970s under President Carter, because fracking and other new technologies have lessened our dependence on foreign oil and gas. The bad news is that a major rise in oil prices could easily tilt Europe and other places back into a recession, which could kill the little growth the United States is now experiencing. The tragedy is all of this was unnecessary, but brought about by the Obama administration, letting short-term political considerations and ideology override good economics and global security.

On Tuesday (6/10), Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, became the first House majority leader in US history ever to be defeated in a primary election. No one in Washington saw this coming. Most try harder to spin the result than to understand why it happened. They will regret it. It was chiefly the impression he was too close to wealthy special interest groups; too timid in defending the values his constituents hold dear that did in Eric Cantor. Their fondness for cheap labor is why big business supports travesties such as the "Gang of 8" immigration bill. His constituents think Rep. Cantor cared more for their money, and Wall Street's, than for them. But those who say illegal immigration wasn't an important issue are idiots -- or think you are. Giddy Democrats think the majority leader's defeat is a problem just for Republicans. But it isn't only Republicans who notice our obese, dysfunctional government serves mostly a politically connected elite.

Would you have traded five terrorists for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl? The decision may have been wrong or right, but what is striking is that President Obama seems to have made this decision, and all too many others, in an ad hoc way, rather than using decision theory. Decision theory is an orderly way of thinking and choosing among alternatives when there is a number of variables for which the probabilities of each may or may not be known to the decision-maker. It's the opposite of Mr. Obama's thought process. Politicians and criminals both have a tendency to underestimate the probability of getting caught in bad acts. Is it because few studied decision theory or because there is a certain recklessness in the nature of those who follow such pursuits? Obviously it's the latter in Mr. Obama's case, who suffers from what is known as The Fatal Conceit.

It's the straw that broke the camel's back, the galactic blunder that's sent virtually every Democrat in a competitive race sprinting for the tall grass. I'm referring to the trade of five senior Taliban commanders for, as Mad Magazine so aptly put it, "one deserting weasel." Desertion in wartime is a capital offense. Team Obama treats it as if it were like cutting an 8:00 a.m. class to sleep in after a night of partying. The only military crime worse than deserting your post in a combat zone is to turn your gun on your comrades. If reports from multiple sources that he collaborated with the Taliban are true, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have done that, too. For months after he walked away from his post, the Army made a massive effort to find Sgt. Bergdahl.  But when reports mounted Sgt. Bergdahl was collaborating, the Army decided it wasn't worth risking the lives of more soldiers to get him back. Now and then the military has sought return of a deserter. George Washington offered to trade Maj. John Andre, whose capture foiled Benedict Arnold's plot to sell West Point to the British, for Arnold.   But Washington planned to hang the traitor, not fete him as a hero -- as Mr. Obama has done.