Quote of The day.......

"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty.

It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and 

To misapply even the best of laws.

He that would make his own liberty 

Secure must guard even his enemy from oppression;

For if he violates his duty he establishes 

A precedent that will reach to himself."

Thomas Paine(1737-1809) US Founding father, 
Source: Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 
7 July 1795

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"Sometimes the law defends plunder and 

participates in it.

Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and 

danger that their acts would otherwise involve..

 But how is this legal plunder to be identified?

Quite simply.

 See if the law takes from some persons 

what belongs to them and gives it to 

the other persons to whom 

it doesn't belong.

See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of 

another by doing

what the citizen himself cannot do without 

committing a crime.

Then abolish that law without delay ... 

No legal plunder;

this is the principle of justice, peace, order,

stability, harmony and logic.

"-- Frederic Bastiat(1801-1850) 
French economist, statesman, 
- the French Revolution of February 1848.

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"All bad precedents began as justifiable measures."

-- Gaius Julius Caesar(100-44 B.C.) Roman emperor

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"Censorship always defeats its own purpose,

 for it creates, in the end,

the kind of society that is incapable of

 exercising real discretion...

In the long run it will create a generation 

incapable of appreciating the difference between

 independence of thought and subservience.

"-- Henry Steele Commager(1902-1998) 
Historian and author 
Source: Freedom, Loyalty and Dissent, 1954