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It was one of those little news squibs that flit by on the periphery and it isn't until you think about it again, if you do, that it makes you ask, "What the...?"

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has rejected the sculpture of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that was to be the centerpiece of his memorial on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Too "confrontational," too much like social realism, wrote commission secretary Thomas Luebke, a piece recalling "a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." He probably meant socialist realism, and by "political sculpture" probably meant fascist and communist or somehow authoritarian.

Well, eye of the beholder and all that, but it seems a strain to find such mischief in the stone figure. The statue has King sculpted as merged with its solid block of granite, arms crossed, feet planted apart.

We shall not be moved indeed.

With gas prices topping $4 a gallon in some regions of the country, now may not be the best time to say something positive about "Big Oil," but here goes anyway.

Where is it written that the cost for a product or service should be frozen in place and in time, never to rise again, or to rise at a pace commensurate with our incomes? People who think this way know little to nothing about supply and demand and less than nothing about the profit motive. That's because at least three generations have been raised on the notion of entitlement, and when one feels entitled to something, one believes someone else should pay.

Senate Democrats last week sought to ingratiate themselves with voters, while doing nothing to produce more energy, with a familiar attack on Big Oil. They want to repeal $17 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies over 10 years, and on top of that impose a windfall profit tax on companies that don't invest in new energy sources. This is political expediency at its worst.

Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron Corp., told me it's a myth that oil companies are not investing in new energy sources. He says that last year alone, Chevron spent $20 billion exploring new sources of energy.

Robertson said President Bush's trip this week to Saudi Arabia is "highly embarrassing" because he is "calling on the Saudis to produce more oil when we are not doing it ourselves." The last refinery built in America was in 1976. Tighter government regulations are the main reason. That's how unserious we are about our energy "crisis."

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the modern state of Israel. There can be no better time to acknowledge and celebrate the success of this extraordinary project.

Israel was established to provide a safe haven for millions of Jewish refugees, whom the world had long refused to protect from persecution and mass murder. From that day to this, Israel has continued to perform that role. It has absorbed millions of Jews from all over the world -- from the Arab countries where they were second-class citizens; from the Soviet Union, where Judaism and Zionism were virtually illegal; from Ethiopia, where a Jewish community that had been separated from the rest of the world for centuries was reunited with its brethren; and from many other countries where economic or political uncertainty made Jewish life uncomfortable or unfeasible.

But Israel is more than a haven; it is one of the most vibrant and progressive societies in the world. Here are just a few examples of ways Israel is on the "cutting edge":

• Israelis have created an energetic civil society, with the freest press in the Middle East and a strong pluralistic democracy that includes Arab representation in parliament.

• It has developed a high-tech economy that ranks among the strongest in the world. Israeli inventions used every day include cell phones, instant messaging and zip compression. Israel has shared new agricultural technologies with poor countries and recently committed to building the world's first electric car network by 2011.