The Washington Examiner sees the command-and-control writing on the magical thinking wall: The CAFE rule is the fleet-wide average fuel economy rating manufacturers are required by Washington to achieve. The new rule — issued in response to a 2010 Obama directive, not to specific legislation passed by Congress — would require automakers to achieve a 40.9 mpg CAFE average by 2021 and 54.5 mpg by 2025. In case you’re wondering

If you’re running for Governor in a liberal state, you have to very craftily hide your conservatism — a savvy political posture that includes, incidentally, a willingness to govern as a kind of moderate / progressive Republican who is able to collaborate successfully with Ted Kennedy on creating a system for state run health care — if only to make sure that no one in the state ever knows just

I blame the Hobbits for hating this so much that the GOP leadership, by way of contradistinction, was forced to cut a deal just to show that they aren’t controlled by the filthy ideologues whose purist true believing is naive and dangerous and unhelpful. These TEA Party types are going to be the death of us! (h/t geoffB)

I posted this in the comments yesterday, but not everyone reads the threads all the way through, so I figured I’d elevate it to the front page. Which I can do, this being my site and all. First, this: The Romney campaign — perhaps sensing a potential Santorum surge — has begun in earnest to dump its oppo research into people’s inboxes. To wit: “Romney is going after Santorum now.

But don’t worry: these are the same leftists who have taken over institutional control of just about everything they feel can lend authority to their political agenda. So the real purpose of the investigation, I’d guess, is to suggest integrity where none exists, and to lead, by the ultimate inaction of the committee, to exoneration of their choices — and in an oddly circuitous way, validation for the winners. Meaning