The things you can buy from our National Archives

Some of the things the National Archives sells are wonderful. As for other things…well, read this and see.

We’ve decided to fill our home with a few of America’s most important documents. So far, we’ve gotten ourselves copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, which we ordered from the National Archives. They’re beautiful reproductions on parchment-style paper. They were very affordable because we didn’t buy them framed, which increases the price by about $200. We framed them ourselves for substantially less money, which is less attractive but they still look just fine on our walls.

Next, we wanted to get framed copies of those important English documents that laid the foundation for America’s rights. You can get a copy of the Magna Carta from the British Library but it’s expensive. No one anywhere, in England or America, seems to sell copies of either the Petition of Right of 1628 or the English Bill of Rights of 1689, both of which laid the groundwork for our Bill of Rights.

We also went browsing at the National Archives website to see whether that institution sold any of those documents. The National Archives does sell a framed version of the Magna Carta but it’s just got the text in English, rather than being a facsimile of the original Latin document. It’s also very expensive. Thanks, but we’ll pass.

However, we did find something utterly fascinating. If you scroll through the “framed prints and documents” pages on the National Archives website….

Wait, I won’t tell you, I’ll show you. The following are all of the images available on the first page of the “framed prints and documents” link. See if you spot what we did:

Yup, there she is: Kamala Harris. No presidents are in that collection of important national documents, including the current occupant of the Oval Office. Just Kamala.

I offer this to you as just a little more evidence, if you need it, that our National Archives has gone woke and, as with the rest of our federal government, someone needs to do an Augean stables-style cleaning there too.