Just realized that I've started to check DU in

[RVN VET71]

24. Scanlon's was a muck raking magazine in the late 60's early 70's

It was put out of business, literally, by the printer's union in America which was enraged at its reporting on terrorist bombings in the U.S.. The mag printed a map that showed domestic bombings that took place in a short period of time (about 2 years) across the lower 48. I don't know the political leanings of that union, but I strongly suspect that it supported Richard Nixon -- even after the bombing of Cambodia, the Watergate break-in and other of his criminal actions had been exposed.

But I digress. Scanlon's took as its motto the "Trust your mother . . ." apothegm. Some 20 years after the fascist printers refused to print Scanlon's any longer, Sidney Zion, one of Scanlon's editors in its 1970-1971 run, wrote a book titled "Trust Your Mother But cut the Cards."

But the earliest coinage came in 1900, when Finley Peter Dunne published a book -- that preceded Scanlon's use of the term by 70 years -- in which his fictitious character, bartender Martin Dooley is quoted saying "Trust everybody, but cut the cards." (Dunne wrote a humorous and politically satirical column for the Chicago Daily News in the early decades of the 20th century.)

Sorry for getting all Cliff Claven on you, but I thought the story curiously interesting. (I just looked up the magazine's history on the intertubes and found that you can buy the complete run of Scanlon's, all 18 issues for the low, low price of $5,000!)