8 years ago: You can copy off mine

August 22, 2005, on this blog: You can copy off mine

OK, first of all, Don’t Panic. You’ve still got a few hours left. I’ve written term papers in less time. You folks can still get your constitution written by midnight.

And here’s the good news: You’re allowed to cheat. You don’t even have to attribute or footnote or anything. Trust me, I’m an American and this is what we did. We cribbed off of the Iroquis nations for our first draft, the Articles of Confederation.

Admittedly, that draft wasn’t a keeper, but it got us through an initial rough patch and gave us time to regroup and write the Constitution we’re still using to this day — 216 years later.

This is a pretty good Constitution. Feel free to use it. The whole thing is online, so you can just copy and paste. Control-A, Control-C, Control-V and you’re done.

Well, almost done. You might want to edit a little. We’ve done some editing ourselves over the years. …