AMERICAN AUTOBAHN

As Mark Twain said: "There are lies. There are damn lies, and then there are STATISTICS."

"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalists is to destroy the truth; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell this country and this race for their daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
–John Swinton, Chief of Staff of the New York Times and the "Dean of his Profession", in a toast before the New York Press Club, 1953

"There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
–Katharine Graham, chairman of the board, The Washington Post Company

"Before Governor Pat Brown appointed me to the Superior Court, I was for two years a judge of the Municipal Court of Los Angeles. On my very first day in that court, a man in late middle age appeared before me. The charge against him was that he had driven his car 65 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. A policeman said he had followed his 1949 Cadillac and clocked it at 60. That, as far as the policeman was concerned, shoud have ended the case. The defendant politely disagreed. 'Your Honor,' the man said, 'My car is broken. It's been broken for three years. It won't even go over 35. I can't take it on the freeway, couldn't get it to go over 35 if my life depended on it.' The policeman laughed out loud. When I asked him about the car, he said that whatever the defendant claimed, he had clocked the car at 60: 'I have yet to see a Cadillac that won't go over 35.' 'All right, If you'll wait until I finish with my other cases, I'll ride in your car myself. If it won't go over 35, you win.' The defendant waited patiently most of the day for me to get through my calandar. Then, just before rush hour, I ducked out with my bailiff. The bailiff sat in the driver's seat, the defendant in the passenger's seat. I sat in the backseat, and away we went. No matter how hard the bailiff pressed on the accellerator, no matter how long a start we had, that car would not go over 35. It had a broken automatic transmission, and it would simply not allow the engine to engage the wheels fully. I took the defendant back in court, banged my gavel very lightly, and said, 'Not Guilty.' The defendant and his car taught me a valuable lesson: Put your own eyes and ears and good sense into the case before you. Don't trust others when your common sense is telling you that something is wrong. Look for the truth in case with your own eyes. The law is not supposed to be run like a machine, with inanimate facts being put in and an inanimate verdict coming out the other end.'"
—Judge Joseph Wapner, from his book, The People's Court - A View from the Bench, 1987