A few weeks ago in this very space I implored W to stop giving the liberals ammunition.

He hasn't heeded my words (as if he knew I had words).

Nonetheless, he keeps sticking his neck out and the Demos keep lopping off his head, so to speak.

He was giving them plenty of reasons to crow when he was talking about the environment a while back.

That's what prompted my first advice-to-W column.

But now things seem to be taking a turn for the worse.

The W administration has even disillusioned one Senate Republican to become an independent, a monumental development that may well handcuff W's attempt to press his agenda.

This senator effectively will hand over control of the Senate and all its committees to the Democrats.

And more than likely screw up a whole bunch of possible judicial appointments.

One would think W and his men could have stroked Rep. Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont enough to keep him in the fold.

But no. They honked him off instead.

According to the Associated Press, Jeffords sought a commitment from the White House for more federal education funding for disabled students as a condition for supporting the president's spending plan and $1.6 trillion tax cut.

The White House balked.

Then GOP aides accused Jeffords of backing out of a compromise hashed out with Cheney and other senior Republicans.

Shortly after the vote, Jeffords was snubbed by the White House. Seems there was a National Teacher of the Year award ceremony honoring a Vermont high school educator.

Jeffords of Vermont wasn't invited.

Some GOP aides also intimated that the White House might try to get back at Jeffords by trying to change a dairy support system that benefits farmers in Vermont and the Northeast.

Of course, the W people deny that anyone was playing hardball.

So now Democrats, like House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, get to say things like, 'There's no room for moderates within today's inside-the-beltway Republican Party.'

Of course not.

Next comes the fund-raiser at Dick Cheney's house.

Now I can live with the $23.9 million that W raised at his black-tie gala the other night.

That was pretty much normal fare for a president. They all do it, although not quite as well as W. His $23.9 million was a record, I do believe.

But Cheney's deal was a different story. Sure, some of the people who ponied up $100,000 each were friends of the Cheneys, but most of them were the guests of the Republican National Committee.

Of course W's communications guy, Ari Fleischer, says Cheney's thing was completely different than Bill Clinton's coffees and sleepovers.

Remember the Clinton days? There were actually Congressional investigations into those coffees and other types of Clinton's relentless fund-raising.

The Cheney thing was different, you see, because nobody paid any money - that evening.

They all already donated $100,000 or more and the get-together was just a big thank-you event.

Yeah, whatever.

And of course there would be no quid pro quo at something like this, Fleischer assured us, even though the invitation offered the guests access to senior White House staffers and members of cabinet offices.

Let's face it. No one can deny the cold, hard fact that money buys access.

Well, no one but White House communications guys, anyway.

At least three of W's cabinet members - Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thomson, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Education Secretary Rod Paige - declined private meetings with donors.

Gee, those guys must have missed the fund-raising classes.

And then there's energy.

W's 105-point energy plan has surely drawn plenty of fire from Democrats.

It's too long on drilling and building nuke plants and building refineries and too short on conservation and emission standards, they say. That's certainly debatable.

But the eminent domain proposal that W called for could cost him GOP support for the rest of his energy program.

W called for expansion of the federal government's power of eminent domain to expedite building power lines on private property.

Eminent domain is when the government pretty much forces you to sell your property for the public good.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission currently has the right to seize private property to lay natural gas and oil pipelines, and W wants to extend that to electric lines.

Currently, electric lines are regulated by state and local governments.

Scripps Howard reports sharp disagreement even among Republicans.

Even Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources chairman, disagrees.

Murkowski's energy plan pretty much mirrors W's on most other issues, but not on eminent domain. "Our rationale is that states ought to have the maturity, discipline to address this themselves,' Murkowski said.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, also is a critic.

The overview of W's energy plan calls for federal "authority to obtain rights of way for electricity transmission lines with the goal of creating a reliable national transmission grid."

It notes that "one already exists for natural gas pipelines."

I can see why there are Republicans critical of the plan.

It seems to fly in the face of the smaller government idea of conservatism, doesn't it?

A couple more points on energy.

My definition of a rolling blackout is somebody driving a vehicle that gets 8 miles to a gallon of gas.

Don't these people remember the good old days of the OPEC-engineered energy crisis of the '70s? Were they blacked out.

What happened? We all started driving little cars and using less fuel.

How soon we forget. Now average gas mileage is the worst since 1980.

I feel sorry for the people in California suffering the real rolling blackouts, but I distinctly remember a few years back that a proposition to build more power plants in that state failed miserably. They voted it down.

And finally, since we have criminalized hate as a motive, why not criminalize greed?

All the people who run energy-related companies - or any company that makes a lot of money, for that matter - could be convicted of greed crimes. [[In-content Ad]]