Good morning, Whitewater
There are no municipal public meetings scheduled in City of Whitewater today. If there were, I’d do my best to warn you.
The National Weather Service predicts that today offers a strong chance of rain, with a high of 46 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac begins a new multi-day series with a prediction that “very unsettled weather sweeps in from the west.”
Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS. It was wet, and the FA just didn’t catch that.
In our schools today, there’s a 7:00 p.m. National Honor Society induction at the high school, and also at 7:00 p.m. an Athletic Booster Club meeting at the high school, and the book fair continues at Lakeview School today.
In Wisconsin History on this date, in 1836, the Wisconsin Historical Society reports that Governor Dodge Signed the First Wisconsin Law:
On this date territorial governor, Henry Dodge, signed the first law passed by the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature. The law prescribed how the legislators were to behave, and how other citizens were to behave towards them. For example, it authorized “the Assembly to punish by fine and imprisonment every person, not a member, who shall be guilty of disrespect, disorderly or contemptous behavior, threats, in the legislature or interference with witnesses to the legislature; also to expel on a two thirds majority in either house a member of its own body…” This did not keep the members from vociferous arguments, fist fights, or even shooting one another
The first law of the territorial legislature, and already off to a bad start — how others should behave toward legislators? Perhaps if legislators had engaged in fist fights less often, they might not have needed to regulate ‘disrespect.’
Then and now, what a self-interested incumbent public servant cannot earn freely, he takes by legislation.