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The History of Our Freedoms
Mondays

Historian and legal scholar Dr. Bill Chriss recounts moments in history explaining our fundamental rights as Americans.

Latest Episodes
  • What caused Americans to rebel against their own country, Great Britain?
  • The Austin yogurt shop murders demonstrates that constitutional rights are more than annoying technicalities.
  • Why are successful independent candidacies so rare?
  • The Fathers of the Constitution spent a lot of time thinking of the Roman Empire...and it wasn't for the meme.
  • Less than 20 percent of today's Americans are old enough to remember the Watergate scandal and constitutional crisis of 1972-74.
  • The framers of our constitution did not intend that the president "run the country."
  • The Texas state constitution contains its own Bill of Rights that protect rights above and beyond those already protected by the federal Bill of Rights.
  • In the 1840s and 1850s, escaped Texas slaves blazed a less well publicized path to freedom.
  • The Underground Railroad was a system of back roads and safe houses leading to the free states of the North and to Canada.
  • What was just a few pages long in 1876, now takes up four volumes in a book-and-shelf law library.