Today is the 238th anniversary of the adoption, on June 12, 1776, by the Fifth Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Drafted by George Mason, with help from James Madison and some parts changed in the floor debate, it is one of the primary sources of the Bill of Rights.
Of particular interest are these sections:
QuoteSection 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.
= term limits
QuoteSection 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.
= faithful execution of the laws by the executive
QuoteSection 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
= RKBA is an individual right
Full text here: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/print_friendly.html?page=virginia_declaration_of_rights_content.html&title=NARA%20|%20The%20Declaration%20of%20Independence%3A%20A%20Transcription (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/print_friendly.html?page=virginia_declaration_of_rights_content.html&title=NARA%20%7C%20The%20Declaration%20of%20Independence%3A%20A%20Transcription)