This is what is wrong with our Government......

[kcjenkins]

John Haines, a retired car dealer from Glenwood Springs, Colo., wanted to do his part: the marble Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has severe cracks, and he decided to take action. Haines commissioned a new piece of marble from the same Colorado quarry where the original was from, so it would match the original exactly. It took five years to find a perfect match, and it was cut in 2003. He paid $31,000 out of his own pocket for it, and even arranged free transportation for the slab to Washington D.C. But the replacement marble is still sitting at the quarry, since the government won't accept it. Instead, the Arlington National Cemetery has budgeted $2.2 million for the replacement project, $80,000 of which is solely to support the bidding process.

"A citizen can't just give us any piece of marble and say, 'This is what we'll use to replace the tomb'," sniffed Arlington's deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham.

"I understand how the government works," Haines said. "But there comes a point when you just say 'to hell with it'." (Denver Post) .

[jainen]

>>A citizen can't just give us any piece of marble<<

Of course he can't. How do we know he isn't a terrorist hiding a bomb he wants to smuggle into our nation's capital?

I'll bet that's it. Probably marble, which is a dense limestone like the mountains they bury nuclear waste in, absorbs radiation so you can't detect the WMD stashed inside.

[Mel in Hawaii]

I don't know about patriotism, but I tried to give a school 10 cases of Legal size paper and they refused it because they wouldn't be able to use it since they never use legal size paper. (As if the teachers couldn't find a use for it.) A few weeks later I was sitting waiting for my son, only to see a delivery driver dropping of a load of paper, including several cases of legal size. Government waste is all around us at every level of government, cleverly hidden as an 'economic stimulus' by buying and spending more than they ever needed to.

[PapaJoe]

Mel, maybe you could pass your story on to a local TV or newspaper reporter. Others in the community might like to know about the school's spending habits, too.

[kcjenkins]

http://www.weirdnewsvideo.com/

Here is the gravestone story...