Recent articles in your newspaper have shown the chaos, turmoil and revolutions happening in the Middle East, starting with Egypt, and spreading to other Middle East nations. The revolution in Egypt may turn for the worse as The Muslim Brotherhood has a strong probability of taking over, and this group is anti-Israel and anti-American. This, coupled with other extremist Islamic countries, poses a real danger to the USA by stopping the flow of oil to our country.

With all of this turmoil happening, the gas prices are soaring at the pump along with food prices and other commodities. Yet we are sitting on billions of barrels of oil below our ground and off of our coasts which is left untapped because of the absolute stupidity of our government. President Obama has put a 7-year moratorium on drilling offshore because of the BP spill and a despite a court ruling that the ban is not necessary. Oil in Anwar, Alaska is disallowed despite the hundreds of miles separating the oil fields from the wildlife preserves. As a result, our nation is held hostage by our own government as we are unable to free ourselves from energy-producing nations that have vowed to wipe us out. Drilling here to meet our energy needs would also create jobs, economic opportunity and reduce our deficit.

The stupidity of our government includes both political parties and presidents going all the way back to Jimmy Carter and the oil embargo of the 1970s by the Middle East cartels. This issue is not even showing up on the radar screen today with our government.

Drilling for oil should be a top priority along with the balancing of the budget because our nation can fall to a foreign power or collapse from within if we don't start drilling again immediately.

John A. Malagrin, Baltimore