In the short term, the company's executives contend, the most realistic way to cut fuel consumption and emissions, and save the planet, is through innovations like a three-cylinder engine that BMW showed to reporters at briefings last week and again on Tuesday.
Sean Spicer's resignation, on Friday morning, after six months of routinely lying from the White House lectern and then ending on-camera briefings altogether, once again raises one of the most important questions of the Trump era: What is the red line that Trump must cross for his aides to quit on principle?
Those of us who've been to hearings and briefings and markups hear time and again from our colleagues that this costs too much money and we have to make cuts.
The FBI and DOJ repeated the charade in November, hosting another series of briefings for congressional staffers and advocates (again including myself), this time about the FBI's Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines (the DIOGs) that implement the Mukasey Guidelines.
Budget briefings will be by the budget director again.
Sometimes, transparency means saying you have no idea what will happen as officials, in typically soothing voices, have repeated again and again in media briefings this week.
Nevertheless, we found it unethical to force our trial participants to attend the briefings "by all means" (which, in addition, might again have introduced severe bias into recruitement patterns and preoperative ratings!).
And there were again capable dive masters who in predive briefings and with hand signals underwater pointed out the extraordinary on an outing that might otherwise have seemed uninspiring.
And now comes news of his visits to Libya (and subsequent briefings with Vice President Cheney), with Perle acting once again as, reportedly, an unregistered agent of influence.
Mr Feith sets himself up again by arguing that Mr Rumsfeld insisted on briefings that were "full of facts" and "rigorously sourced".
