On-Topic .. Randy "Duke" Cunningham ... The "Dukester"

'Sad' says it all. There seems to be far too many people of whatever political stripe tripping over their own follies of late.

Bill Banaszak

here's mine: :-)

period commode and a circa 1830 Restoration period commode.

Because a Congressman needs a really special crapper.

Cunningham is an embarrassment to the Republican Party, to Vietnam veterans and to Naval aviation. However, one does not get to Congress by being a boy scout. If one was to kick over the rock that just about every Senator/Congressman (Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever) lives under you'd find dirt; some a little dirt.....others a lot of it. Power corrupts.....absolute power corrupts absolutely. And, as Barretta used to say; "an' dat's da name a' dat tune."

"Bill Woodier" wrote in news:peydnRFTareH snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

And I find that truly disheartening. I always entertained the idea of running at least for a state level seat, but frankly I like to think I'm particular about the people I do business with.

What I really find just gut wrenching is you have a guy who was a fighter pilot, able to quickly make life saving decisions in a crisis situation, remains calm through the whole thing, who was a highly trained technical professional and an "officer and a gentleman" and he still had to be picking apples off a tree he shouldn't have even been standing next to. I mean most politicians are just scummy lawyers who are used to bending the meaning of laws or otherwise just sleazebags who couldn't hold a job in the private sector, so you expect this kind of thing.

The whole thing is putrid, I'm losing any hope of "peaceful" reform. It may be getting time to push the reset button on the Constitution.

Agreed 110%, concerning politicians...and that's what make it so disgusting - the guy is (was) supposed to represent the "best and brightest" of us, and it would seem that what we have come to and are now expected to accept that the "best and brightest" of us will simply roll over and become part of the machinery once it come down to it.

Here's how I spell "reform": TERM LIMITS. Until we get them, never vote for an incumbant more than once. That's what I do.

For that much cash he could have sent off to Vietnam for part of the wreckage of "Col. Tomb's" MiG and had a commode made out of that.

Heck, maybe they have commodes like that at the Hanoi Hilton:

Well it ~was~ a French colony....

I would agree with you regarding term limits, Rufus. The longer a particular "public servant" remains in office, the more tempting the "dark side" becomes and the more confident they become that they can get away with it.

If a term limit is good enough for the office of President of the United States, it should be good enough for Senators and Representatives.

Here's an idea. Senators and Congressmen get no salary at all. If they balance the budget, they get 1 million dollars each tax free. They can only serve 4 years so they have the potential of walking away with 4 million dollars tax free. We could save trillions of dollars. Lets out bribe the briber's

My sentiments exactly.

How about this addendum, Bill - No current holder of elective public office may run for any other elective public office without FIRST resigning from his current post. Simply - can't run for a job if you already got one. Also means you can't run for 2 posts at once. No covering your bases, ala Senator Lieberman. Running for Vice-Pres. AND for re-election as a Senator simultaneously is just WRONG. Either DO the job you were elected to do - OR resign & run for another one. NOT BOTH,

-Kevin in Indy, where the Football team is 11-0, and the price of gas is $1.87. *evil grin*

Tom, I think his point was that bribery isn't stealing.

If you go through their writings, one of their key assumptions was that a Republic can't survive without public virtue.

Their defintion of virtue is quite different from how we use the word today, as they viewed it more in terms of a citizens obligations to the state. The closest thing I'm aware of in today's world generally comes from those who have served in a professional army.

Actually, if you read the FFs carefully,,many of their expectations of citizens sound nearly Fascistic compared to modern standards.

BTW, I'm surprised no one's touched on the real problem in national politics yet, although those who quote Acton are close.

It isn't absolute power which corrupts; it's absolute immunity. Today's representatives are nearly unseatable under normal conditions, since both parties ruthlessly gerrymander voting districts. Various "civil rights" groups -instead of expressing indignation about districting- eat thisstuff up, as it guarantees a certain number of all-black districts. After all, we all know that only black congressmen can truly represent black citizens, and so on...

It's sad that attempts to re-district states recently failed >