Last Saturday, the federal government approved sales of offshore plots for oil drilling off the North and South Carolina coasts:

The Carolinas’ coast is included in areas a federal agency proposed Friday for possible oil and gas drilling.

Leases off most of the Atlantic coast could be offered for sale between 2010 and 2015, the Minerals Management Service said in a draft proposal.

Ten of the 31 proposed sales, including those off the Carolinas, were off-limits to drilling until presidential and congressional moratoria expired in mid-2008.

Whether all those sales actually go forward will be up to the incoming Obama administration, the service said. Public and political support, environmental sensitivity and revenue-sharing with states will factor into those decisions.

We will be interested to know if Charlotte’s Mel Watt (D-NC) will urge President Obama to include the jobs that would result from the oil lease sales in the 3-4 million jibs he promised to create or save.

We are confident that Charlotte’s Sue Myrick (R-NC) will support the job creation bill given her past position on the issue.

This could be an early test for Obama. As I have argued for weeks, Republicans must be vigilant in pitting Obama and the Democrats against each other and their job killing radical environmentalists and trial lawyers that pay the Democratic Party’s bills for all to see. Especially for all the naive Obama voters who believe he will “stimulate” an economy other than a government jobs and lawyer position economy.

If the American people are denied the right to bail themselves out thru simulations like recovering our own energy resources, then we should take Obama’s words of praise for the “doers and makers of things” in his Inauguration speech and drill for the oil as an MLK-like act of civil disobedience.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson