Cicero's 'On Government'

Having finished the amazing On Old Age and other essays, I've picked up a copy of Cicero's oratories and essays On Government - even just the first one, a legal opposition to a corrupt governor, is already giving me some deja-vu on some of the abuses of power and position we have now, the pulling strings for favorites and cronies, setting up straw men to hide money-grabs etc. etc. going on now. And the defense trying to say 'well, yeah, he did some things that probably weren't so great but he's such a great leader, we really can't afford to lose great leaders like him...he's a hero!" (then Cicero proceeds to reveal the truth behind his so-called nonexistent 'heroism', all manufactured for appearance, I love it)

The defense demanded it be argued before a jury of Senators only, then when that was accepted, they stuffed the pool of Senators with 300 newbies of their choosing... even stacked 'town-halls' are recycled news here. *rolls eyes* Reminds me of the Senators in Letters that hired men to holler and protest around someone's house to make it look like their cause was 'popular' with the citizens when it wasn't.

I wish all of our legislators were required to study what happened to Rome - not the final collapse so often referred to but why the Republic crumbled until tyranny was possible.

I <3 Cicero and how his 'voice' comes through in his writing so after a while you get to 'know him' - it helps that I'd already read the excerpts from his Letters and knew something of the man behind the speech. He really was amazing - yes, he had his human foibles, but I would have loved to have heard him speak.

Firewire zots...I mean, thoughts...

We've had a Canon video camera for a little bit that we've never really used because we didn't have anything with the 'firewire' capability to get the blamed stuff off of the camera to someplace useful where we could play with it, like on a computer. Now we finally do - This means I need to learn how to use it after all - my dream eventually is to somehow, some way find out how I can record footage from old vhs tapes to play with.

Any of you have something like this? Any advice on what software to use for conversion, or for editing any resulting usable footage? Is it horribly complicated and full of pot-holes or understandable by a slow-learner (like me)?