To quote the latest report from the FTC's investigators, whose prose isn't exactly scintillating: "The 2006 price increases were caused by a confluence of factors reflecting the normal operation of the market."

Aw shucks. And just when we were getting the tar and feathers ready for those oil executives.

And what were the factors that drove gas prices higher last summer? Among them, greater demand for fuel by vacationers (another big surprise), the still lingering effects of hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) that shut down refineries along the Gulf Coast, reduced oil refining capacity as producers switched to ethanol, and, as you might have expected, greater demand for both crude oil and ethanol. What, no conpiracy? How boring.

Once again the FTC found no evidence that gas prices were being manipulated by some sinister cabal in this country's boardrooms. Despite Senator Pryor's demand for more government regulation of gas prices (shades of Jimmy Carter's long lines back in the '70s), the FTC couldn't come up with any facts to support him.

This isn't the first time a sleek conspiracy theory has run aground on the rocky shore of fact. To quote Joseph Simons, a former director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition: "The FTC has looked at the same phenomenon, which occurs almost every year, year after year, and they get the same result. Why people think it's going to come out any different the next time is unclear. It's a waste of taxpayers' money."

But it's not a waste of ambitious politicians' efforts. They get to posture before the cameras and demand ACTION! -even if it's precisely the wrong kind.

The pols may be wrong again and again, year after year, but think of the advantages. They're able to strike while public anger is at its zenith, appease their louder and less thoughtful constituents, and they never have to say they're sorry by the time gas prices fall and the public's interest in the subject has waned. (Somehow they never get around to demanding a probe when gas prices go down.)

That's the way it is with wild accusations; the facts may never catch up. Or if they do, the story is relegated to the business section. Ho hum.

The price of gasoline may rise and fall and rise again, like that of any other commodity, but the market for demagoguery remains remarkably stable.