Caption from our June 2010 post "I do declare: Tweeting the Declaration of Independence for fun and profit": "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do," Slate quotes Thomas Jefferson — a man after our own less-is-more writer's heart — in "All Men Are Tweeted Equal," an invitation to fellow freedom lovers to "condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet."
"In about two years the entire course of the nation changed," writes our dear friend Scott Ott, setting us up for a cathartic "aha" moment. His headline suggests something along the lines of how Obama & Company's governmental overreach unwittingly led to the Third Great Awakening that is today's Tea Party movement, but no. Ott has something more profound in store for us, a "Founding of the Republic" mini-course delivered in the equivalent of about seven tweets on Twitter:
Feb. 21, 1787: Congress votes for a Convention to consider reforms to the Articles of Confederation
May 25, 1787: Convention starts
Sept. 17, 1787: Convention adopts totally new plan of government, the Constitution
Sept. 28, 1787: Congress sends Constitution to states for ratification, 9 states required for approval
June 21, 1788: New Hampshire, the 9th state, ratifies
March 4, 1789: First Congress convenes under new Constitution