Quotes of the day

From today's Federalist Patriot email:

"It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed -- that is, an extension of the revenue." --Alexander Hamilton

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." --James Madison

"Congress never votes on the things we used to talk about when I got there -- like reining in entitlements or the balanced budget amendment or closing down Cabinet agencies such as the Department of Education. And under Republican control, for goodness sake! Whatever happened to getting rid of the National Endowment for the Arts? Medicare should have never been passed in the first place. And now Republicans compound the problem by enacting this prescription drug bill when the White House has no idea what it will ultimately cost. Choosing between Democrat and Republican bills on prescription drugs is like saying how do you want to shoot yourself -- with a silver bullet or a lead bullet?" --Former Rep. Mel Hancock

"The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan 'FREE TIBET.' It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the 'FREE TIBET' stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbor of ours meant by the slogan he'd been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: 'But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?' she demanded. 'You're not doing anything, are you?' 'Give the guy a break,' I said back home. 'He's advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division [will] go in on Thursday,' the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast." --Mark Steyn