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I want to get the rubber-stamp Republicans out. Maybe the Foley scandal will help us achieve that noble end. But there are vastly more important stories being ignored right now because of the wall-to-wall coverage this affair is getting, like the O.J. Simpson story before it, or the Gary Condit story, or the JonBenet Ramsey story, or last year’s runaway bride story. Can we talk about something else, please?

I’m not alone. Susie Bright says I’m Not Feeling Foley (warning: strong language):

I’m rather devastated on another front. Our Congress passed bills this past week that dismantle habeas corpus, that legalize torture and free-for-all wiretapping. The emperor’s new edicts target anyone, including citizens, who might have a bad hair day in the President’s almighty estimation.

This is that same club — with their teeth bared, instead of their drawers down. As blogger Ian MacLeod puts it, “The Rule of Law is dead in America.” 

Yet this new regime is apparently a big yawn with the American public.

Let’s be fair, though. Even though Bush can target anyone, he’ll probably focus mostly on Arab-looking guys, at least at first. So long as I don’t say or do anything to provoke him, I don’t have anything to worry about. Just keep my nose clean and my mouth shut.

And, to be honest, not everything that happens can match the latest gossip about Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie or Mel Gibson. They set the bar high, you know.

In Georgia, book banners are on the march:

A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction books are an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban “Macbeth” and “Cinderella.”

Nooooooo!!! Don’t give them any ideas!

From Crooks and Liars:

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. –Aristotle

If I’ve learned anything in my years on the internet, it’s that you shouldn’t believe everything you read. So I went looking for some sort of verification of this quote. I found the quote itself in many places, but my cursory search didn’t turn up any attribution that said precisely where in Aristotle’s writings to look for it.

Aristotle’s works are out of copyright, so I looked for complete texts online. I found one collection at MIT, and felt this quote was likely to be from Politics. (I found another translation here.)

There was no verbatim match. He wrote in Greek, so I searched for individual words from the quote, and finally found it, in Politics, Book V, Chapter XI.

Aristotle discusses two kinds of tyrants: those who rule by terror, and those who pretend to care about the welfare of their subjects. The quote is about the second kind — the benevolent tyrant. (He distinguishes tyrants from kings who actually do care about the welfare of their subjects.)

This quote, from the beginning of the chapter, is also interesting:

[R]oyalty is preserved by the limitation of its powers. The more restricted the functions of kings, the longer their power will last unimpaired…

I can’t help thinking that Bush and Rove, if they ever read Aristotle, skipped over some parts.