Congress has rejected a bill to provide immediate relief from high gasoline and heating oil prices that included measures specifically aiding New England. Key lawmakers from oil-producing states engineered the defeat, saying what the nation really needs is a long-range policy to increase domestic production and to lessen dependence on foreign oil. In other news from 1973…

An interesting sychronicity of economic observations in Maine this week. A State Planning Office report says the prospect of slow, perhaps no, population growth here threatens to “slowly strangle” prosperity. A conference of economists in Portland concludes, once again, that the problem with Maine’s tax burden isn’t that taxes are particularly high but that Maine workers aren’t paid enough. A Microsoft executive speaking in Waterville wears a Hawaiian shirt and sandals, uses the word “cool” a lot, talks about how the key to his company’s success is that it rewards employees to the greatest extent possible and concludes by hoping his audience of Maine executives doesn’t think he’s from another planet. Not another planet, but certainly another state.

Just when you though you’d heard the last from Bob Jones University, you haven’t. After Gov. George W. Bush was criticized for appearing at the South Carolina fundamentalist school, BJU deleted from its Web site a statement by its president, Bob Jones III , that called Catholics and Mormons members of unChristian cults. Now the statement’s back, reposted, BJ III says, to refute the idea that it was removed “because of embarassment or cowardice.” We were kind of hoping it had been removed because of intelligence and decency.

Then there’s Eastern Connecticut State University, where students who commit minor infractions of campus rules can chose their punishment — perform community service, such as picking up litter, or attend an opera or other classical music performance. If they’re really bad, they might even have to read a book.

PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — kicked up quite a ruckus with the “Got Beer?” ad campaign it launched on college campuses. The intent, the group said, was to raise awareness of how milk exploits cows and harms humans. The result was a deluge of objections from health experts who pointed out that milk can be a good source of low-fat nutrition, that alcohol is a harmful, addictive substance, that binge drinking is a major problem on campus today and that drunk driving remains a national scourge. PETA has withdrawn the ads and promises in the future to remember that, when it comes to ethical treatment, people are animals, too.