The Solyndra story includes Obama campaign donors and everybody's favorite Wall Street whipping boy, Goldman Sachs, in the middle of the whole sorry mess. Yet it would be a mistake to mark the story down as merely another excrescence of crony capitalism. It is much worse.

Losing money is embarrassing. And an embarrassed Jamie Dimon publicly admitted that J.P. Morgan Chase goofed. Three senior executives lost their jobs as a result. But politicians and regulators in Washington are rushing to leverage the bank's misfortune for their own gain.

For several years now, President Obama and his allies in the environmental movement have promised to usher in a green economy that will create millions of new green jobs that “can’t be outsourced.”

According to political scientist Alan Lichtman, one factor favoring President Obama's re-election is the absence of scandal in his administration. Lichtman may have spoken too soon. The reason can be capsulized in a single word: Solyndra.

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As gasoline prices climb, President Obama's poll numbers plummet. In February, a Washington Post/ABC poll had Obama up 6 points against Mitt Romney. Monday's poll has him down 2. According to the polls, gas prices are a huge part of the story, particularly given how the last 30 days or so have not exactly been great for the GOP.

President Obama has made green jobs and alternative energy research and development a key fixture of his term. But are these efforts really the right course to stimulate job growth and increase America's energy independence?

The scandal surrounding Solyndra — the now-bankrupt, Obama-connected solar power company that received a federally guaranteed loan of $573 million — is well known. But Solyndra, Peter Schweizer says, is only the tip of the iceberg.