Saying It Don't Make It So

Abe Lincoln supposedly used the following riddle to make a point. He would ask "How many legs does a dog have if you count its tail as a leg?" People would count up the four legs, add the tail, and answer "Five." "Nope," Honest Abe would say. "Four. Because you can call a tail a leg, but saying it don't make it so."

With that in mind, here is a story about the mayor of Detroit, who is under indictment for lying in a police whistle blower trial about whether he used his city phone to send sexual text messages to his girlfriend. Today the Mayor issued an edict that from now on text messages on city phones are "private" and not subject to Michigan's open records laws.