Read the Original

The reason you have to read the original document is because someone else's notes may be wrong.

My example is a PDF from the US Department of Justice.  Over night I received an EMail from the DOJ Information Delivery Service, telling me about recent Freedom of Information releases.  In this case it was a PDF of the original certificates of appointment for nine US Supreme Court Justices, which are done in script.  But, the site has a great technology where you could mouse over a document (that is not that easy to read) and see where someone had made it easy to read in a clearer typeface.

The problem is, for at least "William H Rehnquist of Arizona", appointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the date "done" is wrong.  The "fifteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventy-one" is not the year "of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth and ninety sixth".

Now, I am hoping that this is quickly corrected by the Department of Justice.  To that end I have called the Department of Justice and am talking to someone in the FOIA Office who said that he thought it could be fixed.

UPDATE:  Who says Government is not responsible?  I just checked (302128/March 2011) and they have fixed it.

Regards  —  Cliff