HALLIBURTON MANIA! Last week it was Joe Conason making Halliburton and Mars noises (though he’s backpedaled since, protesting that he never really meant that Halliburton wanted oil from Mars — which would make sense, though if so then the oleaginous spin that he put on his piece can only be explained as an effort to get gullible lefties thinking just that while maintaining plausible deniablilty. Well, sort of plausible, anyway, at least to the gullible.) Anyway, now it’s Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune, doing the Halliburton shuffle:

Like a lot of big firms, Halliburton has had its eyes on the moon and Mars for quite a while. Halliburton scientist Steve Streich helped author an article in Oil & Gas Journal two years ago titled “Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries.”

The article, unearthed last week by Progress Report, a daily publication of the liberal Center for American Progress, described the exploration of Mars as an “unprecedented opportunity” for the drilling industry and a “great potential for a happy synergy” between space researchers and “the oil and gas industry.”

Seriously, this is getting more and more like the increasingly baroque Clinton conspiracy theories.

UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Michael Hawkins emails:

Has no one seen the movie Armageddon? If you need to drill, you call in the oil and gas people. Even liberal Hollywood filmmakers know that.

Yep.