[Sacajaweau]

Oh oh....typo...Sounds like a call to Dan Rather is in order.

[CommieCutter]

A professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton argues the period is nothing than an errant ink stain and shouldn’t be there.

This sentence reads like satire. This should be funny, but it's disgusting.

[Maine Mariner]

And of course no one at the time, 1776 discovered the error.

[SecondAmendment]

So are the “Federalist Papers” a typo too?

[mountainlion]

Not enough information but “Typo”? Typewriter were not invented for a couple hundred years after the Constitution was written, probably with quill pens. Lets go to the original signed document to see what the law really is and leave the sensationalism behind.

[SumProVita]

No REAL historian would say any such thing...particularly given the background and copious writings of the Founding Fathers and/or signers.

[TomGuy]

That's what they get for letting Betsy Ross type the dang thang. She never was very good at typing. They should have let Abigail Adams type it. She is much better because she didn't have callouses on her finger tips from all that sewing.

[Paine in the Neck]

"The American Revolution was all a big mistake. The Founding Fathers actually wanted a socialist dictatorship."

NOT!

[GladesGuru]

I suspect Danny Boy Rather would rather stay out of this tempest in a teapot.

Reading the words “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as used by the Founders, the phrase which follows is clear and unambiguous whether or not any punctuation precedes it.

This argument started as a valid historical document examination and publication of a hypothesis. Thanks to America having allowed a plague of lawyers upon the face of the land, and having tolerated commies beyond number in the agencies and among the Academented, this debate now reeks of the agenda driven seeking a peg on which to hang their totalitarian helmet.

George Washington didn’t just talk to the abusive English “swarm of officers sent hither”, when goaded beyond toleration,he and the Americans he led, shot them.

Obamoids think history ended with their glorious assumption of power. End the end, it will be as it must be -
History: 1
Obamoids: 0

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I just happen to have a photo copy of that document (given out everywhere back in 1976). This is what it says....

” ...the pursuit of Happiness.- That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,- ...”
Please notice the first break has .- and the second has ,- that is, a period on the first, and a comma on the second.

[Madame Dufarge]

Aside from the fact that good penmanship was considered an important skill at the time the Declaration was written, the idea that a document so monumentally important would be released for the entire world to see with an ink smear on it is an unbelievably stupid assertion.

The American colonists were not unaware that they were regarded as back-country rubes by their English "betters" and would have been hyper-aware of the presentation of the document.

What a monumentally stupid broad this "historian" is.

[Pollster1]

Is this an argument rooted in some attempt to Constitutionally justify big government? I’m not sure, but it’s got the attention of the National Archives, which is considering changing their online presentation of the founding document.

The stupid hurts.

1. This is the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution of the United States, so even a change would not "constitutionally" justify big government.

2. While the upper case T in "That" is not conclusive (upper case was common mid-sentence due to the German influence on grammar in that century), the period is clearly in the right location and of the right size. There is no indication in the form of the mark that this is anything but an intentional punctuation mark. Further, the presence of the same mark in multiple previous drafts is essentially conclusive proof that the sentence was intended to end at that point.

[GoldenPup]

A professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton argues the period is nothing than an errant ink stain and shouldn’t be there.

UNMITIGATED BULLSHIIT.

[Amendment10]

• "The capital ‘T’ in the word ‘That’ should end any controversy. It is the beginning of a new sentence.

• Typewriter were not invented for a couple hundred years after the Constitution was written, probably with quill pens."

Good observations freepers!

For what it's worth, there's related issues with the Constitution, issues which have been noted. The problem with the Constitution is that it was hand-written, intermediate revisions of Constitution before final draft probably not destroyed like they should have been. Multiple versions of the 2nd Amendment are an example. Have a look.

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Professor Danielle Allen argues that also a “truth” is the role of government in securing these rights.

Along with that "truth" comes the czar and fetters. It's the 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radical, psycho spoiled brat The Fetteralist Capers.

[Organic Panic]

So a progressive professor (redundant I know) finds what she thinks is a typo on a 240 year old document that gives MASSIVE power to the government but can’t find a single anomaly on Obama’s birth certificate.

[Wuli]

The only protection of those rights is supposed to be founded in the Constitution itself, not the government structure it lays out and particularly not a functioning government which makes of itself a higher right than the individual rights the Constitution is founded to protect. The protection of THAT CONSTITUTION and its individual rights is the OBLIGATION of the government, above any political prerogatives or policy ambitions of those elected or appointed to the government.

[Sacajaweau]

"That among these" is conclusive in saying that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are only 3 of them.

Look at the original writing. There is a period and a dash....in fact there are several of them. Its a technique...a period and a pause. Almost like a new paragraph.

[Billthedrill]

Ink smear? There are 26 surviving copies of the original, not "rough drafts". That would be an awful lot of chances to correct an "ink smear". Count me among the skeptics.

[Arthur McGowan]

Totally pathetic and bogus. Whether it’s a comma or a period, it alters the meaning not one iota.

Just some Statists grasping at straws.