Charismatic megafauna ate my food stamps. And my student loan, my utility regulations, and my Medicaid. Did I mention my child support payments?

The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is home to an important caribou herd. There is no excuse for disrupting its existence -- and the existence of the Gwichi'in Indians who eat the animals -- for the sake of a few barrels of crude. There is also no excuse for the liberal establishment to protect ANWR at all costs, even if that means sacrificing other possibly bigger principles.

I recently spoke with the global warming campaigner for one of the biggest environmental groups in the country. I asked her why I hadn't heard a peep out of her group when Congress was about to approve the dreadful energy bill in August. She said she didn't know. I asked why I had received mailings and press releases trying to get ANWR drilling out of the bill. Was that the group's only priority, I asked. She agreed that they had spent far more time on ANWR than on anything else. As a result, this bill will markedly increase global warming, which will probably do more to wipe out the caribou than an oil drilling operation.

But hey, they "protected" the charismatic megafauna.

In general, if you see the Republicans putting ANWR oil drilling into a bill, you can go to the bank knowing that the bill contains many far more heinous provisions. And you can count on the Democrats to use all their political capital and parliamentary tricks to kill ANWR drilling while simultaneously sacrificing all the other policies.

The Repubs last week dropped ANWR drilling from a spiteful, mean-hearted budget-cutting measure. They left behind the cuts to "Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child support enforcement," according to the Anchorage Daily News. The entire "budget-cutting" measure would have saved less money (about $10 billion a year) than the Repubs plan to spend by permanently repealing the I-guess-I-should-have-given-away-the-money-before-I-died Tax (more often called the Estate Tax).

The good news is that the Must-Drink-More-Oil wing of the Republican Party was so pissed at the loss of the ANWR drilling that they killed the rest of the bill. So I guess sometimes stopping ANWR drilling can have a bigger effect, especially when Karl Rove is in the doghouse.