Let’s forget about the fact that there is something bizarreal — most comical — about Texas prison authorities believing that a sports history could lead to “the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots.”

Let’s forget that they are denying a man reading material in the last hours of his life.

There is something repugnant about the fact that they think a book — any book — would be the source of resistance, but not the basic reality that Gov. Rick Perry has executed 159 people since he took office in 2001. Or not the fact that the people on the row have no civil rights, no access to radio or television, or even arts and crafts. It reminds me of the words of Carl Oglesby from Students for a Democratic Society, who said, “It isn’t the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.”