September to Remember

The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History September 23 - 29.

Happy Fall, everyone. The third of the four seasons has arrived, bringing us football, pumpkin-spiced everything, and communicable diseases brought home from your first grader. I love fall because it’s the time of year when you need to get a shot to protect yourself from everyone else.  

September is also the last month of the federal fiscal year. For Congress, that usually means a wave of bills passed over the last 30 days.

Congress got right to it beginning in September 1789. A flurry of activity took place, including one I highlight below.

This week, we honor Congress, which passed the first 12 Amendments to the Constitution on September 25, 1789. We branded the first ten the Bill of Rights. We then shipped them off to the individual states for approval.

Two hundred thirty-four years later, this humble historical humorist ranked all 27 Amendments to the law of the land.

If you missed them, you can find all of them right here.

It was a fun topic to cover and learn from. Ranking numbers 27 and 1 were easy, and the rest all fell into place. I still don’t understand the Ninth Amendment or why we can’t figure out the exact purpose of the Second.

The Constitution is a great foundation, even though people interpret it as a way to deny me and 700,000 Americans representation. But we did pass an amendment that allows us to vote for the Democratic nominee for president, so there’s that, I guess.

For those subscribers who read all year, did you learn anything?  Did anything surprise you? For me, it’s the Eleventh and Twelfth. I call these the “Whoops, we forgot some stuff” amendments. These two show us that we are imperfect but can correct anything.

Let’s keep this grand experience going, okay?!

Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:

1.      Congress passed the First Judiciary Act on September 24, 1789. Article III of the United States Constitution established the court system, including the Supreme Court. However, it set no term limits, and neither did the First Congress, which also created the Office of the Attorney General. I kind of wish we could have a redo here. We need a 28^th Amendment! It would be like the Twenty-Second, only for the Supreme Court.

2.      Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act on September 24, 1914. The Independent Federal Agency is tasked with enforcing civil antitrust laws and protecting customers from the idea that a Free Market exists and that we should be beholden to it. For some reason, many people who work 40-hour-a-week jobs think protection from fraud or unfair business practices, like hiking the price of a bag of chips while giving us fewer chips, is a bad thing.

3.      The Warren Commission ruled out conspiracy on September 27, 1964. Six men, including Chief Justice Earl Warren and future president Gerald Ford, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he assassinated President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Only one woman worked on the Commission as a staff person. Alfreeda Scobey questioned if Oswald hadn’t been murdered, how much of what the Commission used as evidence would have been used against him in a trial. She didn’t think a lot would be allowed. I doubt any of the men asked any questions.

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As I mentioned on Friday, Anonymous and I went to a music concert down the street at the local professional baseball stadium. If you were under 30 in the mid-90s to the early aughts, you would’ve loved the list of bands that played. Lit, Filter, Jimmy Eat World, Violent Femmes, Bush, and Incubus made Saturday's day and early evening fun. I won’t mention the final two bands because I slept through them. I stayed the whole day – which is remarkable!

Now that summer is over, were there any concerts you loved attending?

This week looks to be another busy one, but that will not prevent me from dishing out my next round of election rankings.

Thanks for the support of Okay History. I hope your week is filled with pumpkin-spiced happiness.

Okay,

Chris

Blue likes to spend the Fall watching the leaves turn.