NYT story on standardizing prison religious literature

“We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”  Because when you're a government agency conducting a purge of religious texts, what you really want is reliability of the few that remain.

Actually, "reliable" is a really good word here, because it makes obvious the basic problem with government evaluations of religious texts.  Where the approved religious texts "reliably" support the state's view of religious matters, everyone should worry.  Here's a slightly different view of reliability: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion ...."