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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torm" data-source="post: 2025384" data-attributes="member: 12706">Government of, by, and for the People should mean ALL People. Even Pauly Shore. And I did say "eligible" - they have to be 25, not a convicted criminal, etc.And I don't know that I would keep lawyers from running, so much as they should be permanently de-barred if they do. Think of it this way: I'm a lawyer. I run for and am elected to a legislature. I make all sorts of goofy laws no one can follow properly. Then I leave office and return to my practice, and make tons of money walking people through the intracies of the same stupid, counterproductive law I helped make. Conflict of interest.The reason I usually say, "lawyers", period, though, is that there are still ways they could make money from this even if they ARE de-barred - like they still share profits from or own interest in their old firm, or some such.Special interest groups are a problem, but none of them have the direct conflict of interests that lawyers have. Barring lawyers from holding office was actually suggested as the 13th Amendment, shortly before the Civil War broke out, for this very reason. There are some conspiracy theorists who suggest that it was actually ratified, but then swept under the rug during the war, but I don't think anything so complicated or tin-foil-hatty needs to be the case - I just think there were enough lawyers in Congress to vote against it!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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