Free Republic

There is a truism in Washington that was confirmed last week in Congress: Even less popular than government regulation is a regulator suspected of not doing its job. Not for the first time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — or N.H.T.S.A. (pronounced NITZ-ah) — was forced to answer for failing to protect consumers. In this case, the failure involved a defective General Motors ignition switch implicated in 13 deaths. While G.M.’s new chief executive, Mary T. Barra, took most of the heat in two days of House and Senate hearings last week, she shared the grill with the safety...

A report has linked faulty airbags in two of the six models recalled by General Motors to 303 deaths. The study, commissioned by the Center for Auto Safety, reviewed US federal crash data for the models. GM has recalled nearly 1.6 million vehicles over faulty ignition switches which could turn off the engine, disabling the airbags. But it has disputed the number in the report, saying it only looked at raw data and did not evaluate the reasons. "Without rigorous analysis, it is pure speculation to attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions," the company said in a statement. "In contrast,...