In conjunction with a lawsuit against California and lobbying efforts against Washington, an alliance of major automakers — Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Mazda, BMW, Mitsubishi, Porsche, and Volkswagon — are fighting back against the adoption of California auto emission standards with an advertising campaign that redefines the phrase “virtually emission-free.” Picturing a young toddler strapped into a carseat and happily sucking on a popsicle, the ad’s caption states, “Your car may never be spotless but it’s 99 percent cleaner than you think. Autos manufactured today are virtually emission-free.”

The advertisement “ignore[s] greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide as an automotive emission” and takes advantage of a convenient nuance. Though automotive emissions of greenhouse gases have been on the rise, the Bush administration reversed previous policy and has stopped considering greenhouse gases to be pollutants, a decision that is now being fought out in court.

Even if one were to use the automakers’ lenient definition of “cleaner,” their own spokeswoman admitted, “the statement could not be broadly applied to all new cars and trucks until new regulations of such emissions take effect by the end of the decade.” Furthermore, late last year Toyota’s president directly linked the auto industry to environmental concerns about emissions: “If automakers don’t reduce smog-forming emissions, greenhouse gases and the need for petroleum, I believe we won’t be in business.”

Rightfully so, the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists has taken the automakers to task for their deception; its counter advertisement is especially good. When it comes to environmental issues, the auto industry is just following the lead of the Bush administration: if reality doesn’t work for you, create your own.

The White House continues to maintain that the law then-Gov. George Bush signed in 1999 is “consistent with his views” on Terri Schiavo. We rebutted that contention on Think Progress yesterday. This morning we noted that an author of the law agrees with us. Bioethicists familiar with the case agree with us too:

Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said yesterday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected.

“The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head,” said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University’s Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. “This does appear to be a contradiction.“

Terri Shiavo: President Bush considers the complexities of the case…

“This is an extraordinary case. It is a complex case, where serious questions and significant doubts have been raised… And the President is always going to stand on the side of defending life.” — White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 3/21/05

Terry Washington: Governor Bush dismisses the complexities of the case …

“Take, for example, the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old. Washington’s plea for clemency came before Governor Bush on the morning of May 6, 1997. After a thirty-minute briefing by Gonzales, Bush checked ‘Deny’– just as he had denied twenty-nine other pleas for clemency in his first twenty-eight months as governor….[Mitigating cirumstances included] the fact that Washington’s mental handicap had never been presented to the jury that condemned him to death.” — NY Review of Books, 1/13/05

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) lashed out at United States District Judge James Whittemore for the decision he issued this morning:

You have judicial tyranny here…. Judges should obey the law. And this judge – in my mind – simply ignored the law.

Let’s examine what actually happened. The plaintiffs, Terri Schiavo’s parents, were asking for a temporary restraining order. No matter how frenzied Santorum gets, there is a legal standard that determines whether to grant a request for a temporary injunction that Judge Whittemore is required to follow.

Specifically, Judge Whittemore cannot grant a preliminary injunction until the plaintiffs show they have a “substantial likelihood of success of the merits” on at least one of their claims.

Among the plaintiffs’ claims:

1. Theresa Schiavo’s right to a fair and impartial trial was violated because the state judge “became an advocate for Terri’s death.”

2. Theresa Schiavo’s right to due process was violated because the judge failed “to ever meet Terri personally.”

3. The state court’s order violated “Theresa Schiavo’s right to exercise her religion.”

Judge Whittemore carefully considered all of these claims and came to the judgment that the plaintiffs failed to prove there was a “substantial likelihood of success” on any of them. Law and order is still law and order, even if you don’t like the result.

Yesterday in Arizona, President Bush apparently forgot that his town-hall “conversations” are often planned and rehearsed in advance:

MRS. RAYMOND: Thank you, very much, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate you being here.

MRS. RAYMOND: Oh, my great pleasure.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is a lot of fun, isn’t it? (Laughter.) It’s not exactly what you thought you’d be doing last week, is it?

MRS. RAYMOND: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, it was? Okay. (Laughter.) Shows you what I don’t know. (Laughter.)

The White House continues to maintain that the law then-Gov. George Bush signed in 1999 is “consistent with his views.” We rebutted that contention on Think Progress yesterday. One of the people who wrote the law has weighed in, and he agrees with us:

The new law appears to conflict with a Texas law Bush signed as governor, according to lawyers familiar with the legislation. The 1999 Advance Directives Act in Texas allows a patient’s surrogate to make end-of-life decisions and spells out how to proceed if a health provider disagrees with a decision to maintain or halt life-sustaining treatment. Thomas Mayo, an associate law professor at Southern Methodist University who helped draft the Texas law, told the Associated Press that if the Schiavo case had happened in Texas, the husband would have been her surrogate decision maker. Because both he and her doctors were in agreement, life support would have been discontinued, he said.

In its new, industry-friendly rules on mercury regulation, the EPA claimed it couldn’t regulate toxic mercury pollution aggressively because the cost to the power plant industry would far exceed the public health payoff. The health benefits from regulating mercury would only be worth about $50 million a year, they shrugged, while it would cost the industry $750 million a year to stop polluting.

It’s not true. Even worse, the EPA knew that and hid the evidence.

The Washington Post reports today the EPA stripped from its report all references to a Harvard University study — co-authored by an EPA scientist, peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists and paid for by the EPA — which came to a scientific conclusion totally opposite to the one the EPA was politically interested in finding. The Harvard study proved the health benefit to regulating mercury poisoning would be 100 times greater than the EPA said and would save nearly $5 billion a year through reduced neurological and cardiac harm. Recognizing that study would have thrown a giant wrench in the push for the pro-industry rules favored by the Bush administration and industry groups, so it was out.

As jaw-droppingly outrageous as this is, it’s just par for the course for this White House. The Bush administration has made a deadly habit of supressing scientific findings that don’t go along with their ideological conclusions, regardless of the harm to the public. And the EPA has been only too willing to aid and abet their plans:

In the days after the collapse of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, a top federal scientist “warned in a strongly worded memo against the quick reoccupation of buildings in lower Manhattan because of possible dangers from asbestos and other toxic materials.” A draft EPA press release reflected this finding, saying the asbestos levels were three times higher than national standards. The White House pressured the EPA to repress these findings and to send a memo on Sept. 17, 2001 ,that dangerously declared, “their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe.”

In 2003, the White House gutted an EPA report on the dangers of global warming. The administration stripped out all language about the dangers and the causes of global warming. According to an internal EPA memorandum circulated at the time, after the White House supressed these findings, the section “no longer accurately represent[ed] scientific consensus on climate change.”