[weikel]

Ussually I agree with you but no dice the Federal government is run almost entirely by lawyers has been for over a century. As Mencken said

"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." –H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924 Aug 4. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe.

[Ohioan]

H.L. was indulging his smart alec side. But neither you nor he are really making the point you claim. Naturally most people in lawmaking are lawyers. That does not say anything good for the turkeys who would usurp power--i.e. most of those in Washington, regardless of profession, party or intelligence level--nor does it disparage in the slightest those who still honor their oaths of office.

Because all Medical Doctors are Physicians, does not mean that all practitioners of the ancient art of physicians are discredited, per se, because so many Doctors today seem more interested in the financial rewards than in their oaths; nor, even worse, because so many Doctors today are so afraid of the bad apples in the legal profession--of which I acknowledge there are some outrageous examples, whom I would no more wish to embrace than a Leper--that they over-treat many patients, with very serious financial consequences, as well as human tragedy.

The lawyer bit is a digression from the real issue. While lawyers jokes have been amusing since ancient times, they are not the real issue.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site