"Robatoy" wrote in message
...

On Nov 25, 9:29 am, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:23:04 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"

wrote:
Tom "The Hammer" Delay was finally found guilty today in a Texas court
snip -- Minna Thomas Antrim

Corruption and greed know no partisan affiliations. Neither does
stupidity.

I whole heartily agree!

If the central government were chosen and paid by Ben's thoughts, corruption
and greed might be under tighter control:
They are of the People, and return again to mix with the People, having no
more durable preeminence than the different Grains of Sand in an Hourglass.
Such an Assembly cannot easily become dangerous to Liberty. They are the
Servants of the People, sent together to do the People's Business, and
promote the public Welfare; their Powers must be sufficient, or their Duties
cannot be performed. They have no profitable Appointments, but a mere
Payment of daily Wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their Expences;
so that, having no Chance for great Places, and enormous Salaries or
Pensions, as in some Countries, there is no triguing or bribing for
Elections.
Benjamin Franklin, letter to George Whatley, May 23, 1785

Of course the children of all generations have to be taught...
It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our
children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry
and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence
of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity,
faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in
infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

And the "PC" crowd has done much to suppress it...
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is
the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the
public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in
the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any
real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private
passions.
John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, April 16, 1776

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were
supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government.
Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most
dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal
gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions,
seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the
public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by
precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the
constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has
perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in
consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life,
if secured against all liability to account.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823


Tom

Well we're finally getting to build here in TN, and an attached shop is
included... 29' X 29'.
I could only get 8' walls since the rest of the house has them, and the roof
would have looked weird to match a higher wall. My son in law is the
contractor, and I've been "swapping time" helping him with other houses
(plus trying to get a new practice going on a shoe string) so I haven't had
time to drop by the Wreck like I used to...
It's nice to see so many familiar names (and take a moment to remember those
that are longer with us).