GOOD READING

R.S. England, "Congress, Nader, and the ambulance chasers," Amer. Spectator, Sept. 90. Twenty-four children are killed in a Texas school bus accident, and hordes of trial lawyers converge on the grief-stricken parents to offer them cars and new homes for signing a contingency contract. Are they the lowest of the low? No: Ralph Nader is lower, for he does comparable things not for money, but for power; in fact significant contributions are channeled to Nader from the Amererican Trial Lawyers Assn., whose members make $10 billion/year in personal injury suits. And it pays off handsomely, for Nader obediently takes the side of the trial bar when its interests collide with those of consumers. If no longer on the newsstands, order the issue from Amer. Spect., Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216 ($4 ppd.).

The same issue also contains an excellent article on Solarz-Lugar appointee Madam Aquino and the goings on round the Phillippine nuclear plant.

Very lousy reading: the special energy issue of the Sci. Amer., which always slants subjects with an ideological connection, but here all of the articles, some of them written by Big Oil wimps, range from misleading to utterly false. Authors include the obligatory A. Lovins and Ehrlich's understudy J. Holdren, whose article is not just strongly slanted, but contains doctored data.