SOME TOYOTA PRAISE: So, my Highlander Hybrid is the first Toyota I ever owned, and I’ve had it for going on five years now. In over 80,000 miles it’s been a great car, nearly trouble-free, and very pleasant to drive while getting excellent mileage. I would absolutely buy another one, and if the Toyota love-us-again deals get good enough, might do so sooner rather than later.

Am I under-appreciating the “sudden unintended acceleration” issue? Maybe. I can’t help but remember the Audi stink, which sounded very similar but turned out to be because people were stepping on the gas when they thought they were stepping on the brake. P.J. O’Rourke wrote a hilarious chapter on that, and the bureaucratic response, in his A Parliament of Whores, and I assign that chapter to my Administrative Law class at the beginning of the semester.