Live And Let Die.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)

Energy: Don't mourn the massive energy bill that hovers near death in Congress. It does too much in some areas and not enough in others. Better luck next year.

The Senate seems to see its main job as passing legislation -- even bad legislation -- so it can say it's doing something about a problem.

So it is with energy. The energy bill, which now appears doomed, has some good things in it. But the possibility that it might be loaded down with poor amendments that would make the U.S. less energy-secure make it a bad bet right now.

As originally proposed, the bill held some pretty good ideas. Drilling for oil in the Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Providing $16 billion in new incentives to drill for oil and gas. New energy conservation measures. More use of plentiful, and clean, coal. More use of renewable energy. Something, it seemed, for everyone.

But some in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have found much to hate in it.

Democrats wanted stiffer oversight of electricity trading, which they assert was the cause of massive energy disruptions in the West two years ago. (It wasn't; California's failure to fully deregulate its energy markets was.) They didn't get it.

They also didn't like the planned elimination of the 1935 Public Utilities Holding Act, which has ...