Power corrupts absolutely. Lack of it means six games back in the Wild Card race

Among the baseball links in the right hand column of this venerable blog you can find The Pinstriped Blog, which along with Steve Goldman's weekly column, The Pinstriped Bible, offers up some of the finest writing about the Yankees in the baseblogospher. Yesterday's post was an example of why Steve not only can turn a phrase like Jeter/Cano turning a DP, it was also an example of the wide range of Steve's interests and his sharp analysis of baseball, music, and the political end times in which we're currently living. He bobs and weaves through the Yankees' curious situation right now; looks at this week's opponent, the Toronto Blue Jays; from there he's on to a brief history of the great, unheralded group, Moby Grape, along with a link to the writings of master critic, Robert Christgau; he then takes on Reader Mail, which leads him to exhibit his membership card to the Ancient Order of the Shrill, providing trenchant comments on the current administration's secret wiretapping. And he concludes,

...I'd like to think that there are Americans, even politicians, who love their country. You can't love America and not love and respect the Constitution. If what you say is true (to the extent that it even makes sense), then the American republic is really over.

I often think about the words that one of my heroes, Benjamin Franklin, said at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, urging the adoption of the new government:

"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."

Reread that last part. Then reread it again. Our government "can only end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government." The government will fail, Franklin is saying, when the people are no longer worthy of the government. Are you saying we've reached that point?

The post's headline says it all:

So what is power exactly? From Damon to the Fourth Amendment, it's all here.

You know what to do!