THE PRESIDENT'S PAST

I haven't had a quote of the day for a long time, and this one came in from one of my favorite presidents. I always thought he was under-rated.

"All three of my boys smoked pot. I knew it. But I also knew if one was caught he would never go to prison. But if any of my [black] neighbors got caught, they would go to prison for ten, twelve years. No law school has had the temerity to look at what is fundamentally wrong with our legal system, which discriminates against the poor."

-- Jimmy Carter, Emory University Law School, 14 October 2003

(courtesy of Allan Erickson on the MAPtalk list)

And neither have I had a last word. Tonight it goes to the other George Bush.

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

- George H.W. Bush (Bush senior) and Brent Scowcroft in their 1998 book, A World Transformed.

Too bad he didn't pass that intelligence onto his son.