Ross Perot is putting Magna Carta up for aucton

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Magna Carta Is Going on the Auction Block
By JAMES BARRON
Published: September 25, 2007



The 2,500 words fill a page that is a couple of inches shorter than this one, but almost as wide. The faded letters in Latin are unreadable in places. Something that looks like a scraggly, russet-colored tail hangs from the bottom.

It is the document that laid the foundation for fundamental principles of English law. Angry colonists complained long before the Boston Tea Party that King George III had violated it. The men who drafted the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights borrowed from it.

It is Magna Carta, agreed to by King John of England in 1215 and revised and reaffirmed through the 13th century. The tail dangling off the page is a royal seal.

And it is about to go on sale.

Sotheby’s, which today is expected to announce plans to auction it in New York in mid-December, estimates that the document will sell for $20 million to $30 million. It is the only copy in the United States and the only copy in private hands. Sotheby’s says the 16 others are owned by the British or Australian governments or by ecclesiastical or educational institutions in England.

Until last week, this copy was on display in the National Archives in Washington, steps from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But it was only on loan from a foundation controlled by the Texas billionaire Ross Perot, who bought it in 1984 for $1.5 million. The foundation told the archives this month that it had decided to end the loan and take back Magna Carta. Its departure came so suddenly that the archives did not have time to remodel the display case or fill it with some of the nine billion documents from the archives’ own collection....Trudy Renna, the only employee of the Perot Foundation identified on its tax return, said in a telephone interview last week that the foundation decided to sell Magna Carta to “have funds available for medical research, for improving public education and for assisting wounded soldiers and their families.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/nyregion/25magna.html?hp

Link to interactive graphic: Examiing the "Great Paper": http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/09/24/nyregion/20070924_MAGNA_GRAPHIC.html#

[midnight]

1. That is a wonderful gesture on his part. I can't imagine someone

owning such a historical document. I guess I would of thought of it being in a musem.

[TahitiNut]

2. How appropriate. When habeas corpus was abolished, so was the legacy of the Magna Carta.

:grr:

[lovuian]

8. Bingo TahitiNut

Magna Carta is a pile of junk now with the New World Order

and no habeas corpus
what took centuries to free men from the monarchy took just a edict from Bush and Congress of America

Sad times

[rusty quoin]

3. Cheney is disgustingly rich now. Maybe he will buy and burn.

[TahitiNut]

7. I'm betting on some 'royalty' from Dubai, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia. Bandar Bush?

:shrug:

[jgraz]

4. Didn't the Rethugs already do that?

Oh right, that was just the principles of the Magna Carta.

[whistle]

5. Did Margaret Thacher burn the original Magna Carta?

[provis99]

6. How much money would the Constitution go for?

Not too much, I imagine, if only Republicans were allowed to bid.

[Mojambo]

9. I had no idea he had it. n/t

[Canuckistanian]

10. Has it got Bush's s*** stains on it?

Then you know it's an original.