Leftist Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) wants it both ways and some of his colleagues are playing along. The new mantra on oil prices from Liberals is “speculators.”

Obama and McCain have chimed in about “speculating” on the oil market and have come up as dunces themselves.

Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal writes:

On Mr. Durbin’s right is that financial engine of Chicago, the futures industry. Among Washington’s least-kept secrets is that no Chicago politician — right, left or agnostic — would knowingly let anything harm that hometown gravy. And towering over the futures industry is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which, incidentally, is bidding $9 billion to buy Nymex — the world’s largest oil futures market and home to all of those nasty “speculators.”

While Liberals are crying foul and attempting to make people believe Wall Street and “speculators” are the cause for high oil prices Mr. Durbin has done his best to satisfy the same industry his Leftist pals are falsely whining about.

It’s a “carnival of speculation,” howled North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, who introduced a bill to “shut down casino-like betting.”

Maria Cantwell decried the “dark” market and demanded “rules.”

“We are putting oil speculators on notice,” intoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to “investigate all energy contracts.”

 Ms. Strassel continues:

Give Mr. Durbin credit: He’s a main reason the Chicago futures markets have continued to thrive. It was Mr. Durbin who only recently helped ensure the CME-Nymex deal passed antitrust muster. It was Mr. Durbin — along with Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Chicagoan, former CME board member and House Democratic Caucus Chair — who in February sent a public screed to both Treasury and Justice, incensed that Justice would even suggest changes in the structure of the futures markets. It was Mr. Durbin who at that time praised the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for its “vigorous oversight” of the futures markets. That would be the same CFTC that his colleagues are now bashing as an ineffective regulator.

Mr. Durbin in June introduced his own legislation to “reform oil market regulation”. Durbin’s bill calls on the CFTC to do more “investigation” of the market, and offers to supply that agency with the funds to hire a whole 100 new employees.

As one Republican told Ms. Strassel:

“It’s fabulous. We call it the ‘Just Keep Doing Exactly What You’re Doing But With A Little More Money Act.’”

We’re are not Dick Durbin fans, in fact, this guy not only lies in the gutter of politics, he is nothing more than a bottom dwelling parasite. Chicago politics. Indeed.