This is a relatively minimally updated repost from 2020. Material quoted from Wiki, below, is as of June, 2020.
I'm posting this straight out of Wikipedia because it is much funnier that way.

The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution, and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the U.S. Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those found in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the Magna Carta (1215).
Due largely to the efforts of Representative James Madison, who studied the deficiencies of the Constitution pointed out by anti-federalists and then crafted a series of corrective proposals, Congress approved twelve articles of amendment on September 25, 1789, and submitted them to the states for ratification. Contrary to Madison's proposal that the proposed amendments be incorporated into the main body of the Constitution (at the relevant articles and sections of the document), they were proposed as supplemental additions (codicils) to it.[2] Articles Three through Twelve were ratified as additions to the Constitution on December 15, 1791, and became Amendments One through Ten of the Constitution. Article Two became part of the Constitution on May 5, 1992, as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. Article One is still pending before the states.

(Wikipedia)

That is a wonderful example of how to use a few facts to present a false and misleading narrative. Yes, Madison proposed 12 Articles of Amendment on this date in 1789 (Which is, as I have noted before, the most important year in the formation of our actual government institutions). Yes, Congress later approved them and yes, 10 were ratified in 1791 and became the so-called "Bill of Rights". W00t!, BTW.

They have been attacked, excepted and modified into puny shells of their original high sounding assertions. They do NOT guarantee personal freedoms and rights; they do NOT place clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings; and the explicit declaration that all powers not specifically granted to the US Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people has been interpreted out of existence by expansive reading of the various grants of legislative and executive authority or simply ignored. They are but a hollow shell of what they were arguably intended to be. The sole real exception is the Third Amendment. (The Second, while greatly expanded with respect to firearms, is totally ignored and abrogated with respect to knives.)

In addition, none of those amendments, as written, apply to the states. The Supreme Court has applied the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to "incorporate" part or all of some of them to the states. Specifically, the First, Second, Fourth and Eighth are fully incorporated into state law. Part of the fifth (all but grand jury indictment) and part of the sixth (all but Right to jury selected from residents of the state and district where the crime occurred) have also been incorporated into state law. The third, the seventh, the ninth and the tenth have not been incorporated into state law.
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On this day in history:

0793 – Vikings raided the abbey at Lindisfarne which is considered to be the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.

1663 – Portugal won independence from Spain at the Battle of Ameixial.

1789 – James Madison introduced twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.

1887 – Herman Hollerith applied for US patent #395,781 for his punched card calculator.

1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law.

1948 - First Porsche, a handbuilt prototype, was finished

1949 – Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson were named in a typically baseless and sleazy FBI report as Communist Party members, as if that were anybody's business, and as if the feebs ever had any credibility as to anything political (or much of anything else, for that matter.)

1949 – George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. (speaking of the feebs)

1953 – The United States Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in Washington, D.C., cannot refuse to serve black patrons. (District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co.)

1967 – The IDF shot up the NSA Spy Ship USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171. Heh

1972 – Nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phúc was burned by napalm and photographed by Nick Ut moments later running down a road, perfectly capturing the spirit of the US war on Viet Nam.

1982 – An Argentine air attack on two British landing ships killed fifty-six. (Think "strategic sheep purposes".)

1984 – Homosexuality was declared legal in New South Wales.

1987 – New Zealand established national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987.

1992 – The first World Oceans Day was celebrated to little or no avail.

Some people who were born on this day:

I am most disturbed and disappointed at present to find you taking the position that intellectual pursuits must be "watered down" to make them suitable for women, and that a lower standard must be adopted at a woman's college than in a man's. I do not expect any of the other members of the faculty to feel this way about it; they, like (nearly) all men that I have known, doubtless take an attitude of toleration, half amused and half kindly, on the whole question; for even where men are willing to help in women's education, it is with an inward reserve of condescension.

~~ Charlotte Scott, Scott Papers

1625 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini, mathematician and astronomer
1671 – Tomaso Albinoni, violinist and composer
1810 – Robert Schumann, composer and critic
1851 – Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, physician and physicist
1858 – Charlotte Scott, mathematician, the real 8th Wrangler of the 1880 Cambridge Tripos exam
1860 – Alicia Boole Stott, mathematician and theorist, coined the term "polytope"
1867 – Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
1868 – Robert Robinson Taylor, architect
1910 – John W. Campbell, journalist and author
1916 – Francis Crick, biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist
1936 – Kenneth G. Wilson, physicist and academic
1940 – Nancy Sinatra, singer and actress
1942 – Doug Mountjoy, snooker player
1944 – Boz Scaggs, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1945 – Steven Fromholz, singer, songwriter, producer, and poet
1947 – Annie Haslam, singer, songwriter, and painter
1951 – Tony Rice, guitarist and songwriter
1951 – Bonnie Tyler, singer and songwriter
1951 – Tony Rice, American bluegrass musician
1955 – Tim Berners-Lee, computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web
1960 – Mick Hucknall, singer, songwriter
1960 – Terje Gewelt, bassist
1962 – Nick Rhodes, keyboard player and producer
1966 – Doris Pearson, singer, songwriter, and choreographer
1975 – Emm Gryner, singer, songwriter
1981 – Alex Band, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer

Some people who died on this day:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

~~ Thomas Paine

0632 – Muhammad
1768 – Johann Joachim Winckelmann, archaeologist and scholar
1809 – Thomas Paine, theorist and author
1874 – Cochise aka Shi-ka-She or A-da-tli-chi, Chiricahua Apache chief
1876 – George Sand, author and playwright
1889 – Gerard Manley Hopkins,poet
1971 – J.I. Rodale, author and playwright Playwright?
1998 – Maria Reiche, mathematician and archaeologist

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

World Brain Tumor Day
World Oceans Day
Thomas Paine Day
Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

Today's Tunes

Tomaso Albinoni

Robert Schumann

Nancy Sinatra

Boz Scaggs

Annie Haslam

Tony Rice

Bonnie Tyler

Mick Hucknall

Terje Gewelt

Nick Rhodes

Muhammed

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

Open Thread, Oceans Day, oceans, Albinoni, Schumann, Nancy Sinatra, Boz Scaggs, Bonnie Tyler