Wilful blindness

Not surprisingly, the EPA tried to avoid releasing a study on the fact that fuel efficiency has actually dropped since the 1980s. The surprise here isn't the effort to suppress the truth, but the fact that the truth made it into the open:

With Congress poised for a final vote on the energy bill, the Environmental Protection Agency made an 11th-hour decision Tuesday to delay the planned release of an annual report on fuel economy...

The contents of the report show that loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980's.

One more glaring example of how miserably voluntary-compliance models are bound to fail. But fortunately, in this case the public (and the decision-makers) are able to see the facts before the final call is made - not that it'll likely make too much difference to the Congressional negotiators who make a career out of ignoring inconvenient facts.

The same Times front web page also highlights a less-than-surprising story where just the opposite was true:

Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show...

The confidential government deliberations over permissible interrogation techniques that ranged from August 2002 to April 2003 were prompted by a request from officers at Guantánamo. They said traditional practices were proving ineffective against one detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to have been the planned 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a series of techniques in December 2002, only to rescind them temporarily after military lawyers complained...

Mr. Rumsfeld subsequently learned of the military lawyers' objections and that became a factor in his decision on April 16, 2003, to limit the permitted interrogation techniques.

The lesson here is that even as thorough a Bush lackey as Rumsfeld can occasionally be driven to make more reasonable decisions when presented with a better set of principles and options. Too bad that happens so rarely.