Gas bagged

The Senate put its lips to the auto industry’s tailpipe and sucked hard last week. Instead of mandating increased fuel efficiency standards, our lawmakers chose to bury their heads in the crude, voting 62-38 to put the matter into the limp hands of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Such groups as the American Academy of Sciences, which found that fuel efficiency could be drastically improved without compromising safety, were ignored as a majority of senators — with Michigan Democrat Carl Levin leading the way — put pedal to metal and, with the UAW’s encouragement, sped off in the wrong direction.

Instead of taking the high road and displaying some true political courage, the senators voting for this bill — including our own Debbie Stabenow — chose to use the American flag as a rag to wipe the dipstick of big oil.

“I am ashamed …” Sierra Club President Carl Pope stated in a release. “Six months after the assault on the World Trade Center, as American troops died closing in on yet one more al Qaeda stronghold in Paktia Province, as American emissaries traveled the Middle East trying to figure out how to keep the oil flowing while stanching the bloodshed, Detroit decided. It chose the past.”