The old saying was that we should have a government of laws and not of men. The new practice is that we have a government of men and not of laws.

We are governed by fear, and our elected representatives blindly accept badly written laws hastily constructed and motivated by fear and not rational thought. This happened with the Patriot Act, it continued with the authorization for war in Iraq, and now we are told we must spend $700 billion to bail out the perpetrators of financial fraud/wizardry/theft/etc.

This is all to occur without any substantive oversight of the treasury secretary, who will dispense the goodies in the greatest act of corporate socialism ever to occur on the planet.

As loathsome an individual as Newt Gingrich is, his recent statement that Congress needs to slow down and put the brakes on this latest bad idea was right on target.

How about re-regulating the financial industry, allowing appropriate bankruptcies to occur, fostering accountability, and hiring a lot of government auditors to recover fraudulently obtained assets?

How about putting deserving individuals in jail, as opposed to rewarding them?

Richard S. Whiting, Auburn