Gas and Hot Air

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must be doing something right with its new fuel economy standards for SUVs, because nobody seems to be happy with them. The Competitive Enterprise Institute says they will make the overall effort to set gas mileage guidelines "even deadlier for the millions of Americans on our nation’s highways" by leading to more traffic deaths. (Apparently, standards of any size are inherently "deadly.") The Natural Resources Defense Council, on the other hand, calls the new standards a "paltry gesture." (In their view, tough standards are the opposite of deadly--they're needed to "protect the strength and security of our country.")