Wrong. The scandal actually concerns issues critical to us. It is about subjects vital to China's own continued growth and ability to check corruption. It involves the power of international agreements to protect your rights while doing business anywhere.

When Alberto Gonzales worked as President GeorgeWBush's lawyer, he dismissed the Geneva Accords as dated and irrelevant to the war on terror. He wrote briefs justifying torture. He argued against habeas corpus applying to Guantanamo prisoners.

That was bad enough.

When the Republican-dominated Senate confirmed him as attorney general, it received his pledge to enforce the laws impartially, as the constitution obligates. Now details are emerging of thoroughly politicized DoJ law enforcement.

Under Gonzales, Democratic officials were accused of corruption seven times more often than Republicans. A witch hunt was launched against an imaginary flood of voter fraud, so fevered a legal Florida resident was deported to his native Pakistan simply because he mistakenly filled out a voter registration card when renewing his driver's license.

Eight US attorneys were fired at the direction of White House political director Karl Rove. Millions of e-mails required by law to be kept have been erased, apparently to hide the political nature of the firings. Hundreds of civil servants have been hired not for their competence but for their Republican loyalties.

Time reported Tuesday a group of conservatives even complained to Bush, writing: "Mr Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances. He has brought the rule of law into disrepute, and ... engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement."

Some argue all law enforcement is partisan. After all, everyone knows in every country there is one law for the rich, well-connected and famous, quite another for the poor and minorities.

But when law enforcement becomes overtly partisan, whether based on wealth, race, religion, gender, party or any factor, the capacity of law to command respect and obedience breaks down. When assent to law weakens, only fear of force maintains order.

When the slightest doubt about use of force arises, order collapses.

The United States has seen this in recurrent race riots. China sees thousands of mass incidents of disorder annually. Both occur because law enforcement and law making are felt to be unfair by those who riot.

Social order depends on the rule of law being impartial. The same requirement holds for such things as taxes and education. Unequal treatment breeds resentments which can and do explode.

The statue adorning many legislative and judicial buildings of a blindfolded woman holding a scale graphically expresses the core of rule of law. Law enforcement must be blind; all are equal under the law. The scales mean evidence must be weighed fairly, with both sides permitted to make their best case before a judge who ensures no one manipulates outcomes.

The DoJ actions have deeply damaged the principle of rule of law, the fundamental component of today's international order and the key concept governing every contract and treaty ever agreed.

This concerns more than just Americans.

When the world's sole superpower, its largest single economy and formerly the major proponent of international rule of law permits its own practice to become so corrupted it discredits every statement the United States makes on human rights and international agreements, then the fragile global consensus that protects us from government abuse of all kinds stands imperiled.

If the rules are not good enough to bind those who made them in the first place, then why should anyone follow them? If a US administration argues laws and regulations weaken its ability to govern, then what of China, Zimbabwe or Burma?

If it insists habeas corpus and rights to a speedy, fair, evidence-based trial before an impartial jury do not apply to foreigners, then anyone outside their country faces peril.

Without strong EU and US combined leadership of the free, developed world to protect rights of all kinds, things start to slip.

Not only has this joint leadership weakened, it is increasingly seen by other countries, including China, as nothing but hypocrisy.

Unequal law breeds resentments checked only by force, remember? That is why Western militaries are coming under increasing strain. Force alone cannot hold.

If the international community cannot credibly demand standards of behavior of all states, then what protects us from the sort of lawless madness that infected the world in the 1930s?