The name of Alan Carlin, a senior analyst with the EPA Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, should go down in the history books along with America’s other brave and honorable patriots. He is the EPA official who authored a report that reveals the EPA is releasing what could be deemed political reports on the subject of global warming, not scientific ones.

Where California leads, some say, the rest of the country follows. Whether that is good news remains to be seen. Hailed by environmental groups as a breakthrough reversal of several years of Bush administration policy, on Tuesday a federal Environmental Protection Agency official approved a set of tough new standards for so-called greenhouse-gas emissions on new motor vehicles in California.