Men are governed by opinion; this opinion is as much influenced by appearances as by realities; if a Government appears to be confident of its own powers, it is the surest way to inspire the same confidence in others; if it is diffident, it may be certain, there will be a still greater diffidence in others, and that its authority will not only be distrusted, controverted, but contemned.
One of them also proposed a no-cost way to deal a serious blow to the most lucrative aspect of the tax shelter business: changing the rules governing the opinion letters from lawyers that taxpayers use to escape paying penalties when tax shelters are demolished.
"We're being governed by opinion polls on the President's popularity," an opposition politician said.
And that friend might remind him, too, of the difference between issues governed by opinion and those governed by fact.
A similar argument seems to apply to foreign policy - that "leaders lead" and shouldn't be governed by opinion polls.
But laws do not govern public opinion, nor is hard evidence required in that court to convict, as the tight-lipped Mark McGwire well knows.
Even the legal opinions governing the program are still squirreled away in a safe in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
But the administration withheld the opinions governing strikes targeting non-Americans that the committee has also sought, arguing that they are confidential legal advice to the president.
The court's opinions governing money and politics in recent years have changed the political game dramatically, making politicians more accountable to wealthy donors than constituents.
Given the current pace of developments in the genetic and genomic sciences, and the rapidly evolving field of bioethics, legal rules, and opinions governing human tissue research and banking, BAC would rather not hard-code specific rules for regulating research and commercial activities in legislative form.
By Friday, that had spawned a flurry of separate demands from the House and Senate judiciary committees for classified legal opinions governing drone strikes, and the possibility of the first congressional hearings on targeted killings of Americans accused of being Al Qaeda operatives.
