Notes at the Constitutional Convention, 1787 (first posted 12/17/10)
by James Madison
All right, unless you have access to some primo bud (really smooth marijuana conducive to cognition), reading this book may prove to be tedious business. Candidly, it needs to be considered a reference, quite an amazing reference, to the founding document of the American nation.[1] Necessarily, a great deal of the back and forth concerns procedural matters, such as how many senators, reps, terms of office, judicial powers, general composition, qualifications, impeachability, and so on. And these questions are of interest to scholars certainly, to laymen as well. For example, you learn fairly quickly that the high-population states and low-population states tended to have opposed objectives: mainly that the one group should not be allowed to run roughshod over the other. Continue reading
“Son, I’m never going to wear a seat belt; it’s my right as an American to drive as and how I choose—[Dad was a highly skilled driver who would probably, eventually have come to wear seatbelts voluntarily]. It violates everything I believe in… and fought for. I won’t do it, I won’t pay the fine, and they can put me in jail ’til the cows come home.”