The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, is touring EU capitals with the draft of a declaration to be issued when the 15 leaders hold their next summit in Laeken, near Brussels, on December 14 and 15.
South Africa's latest draft of a conference declaration expresses concern about "the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation," but eliminates any description of Israel as a racist state.
In 1997, at the request of bomb survivors, the mayor of Nagasaki at that time deleted words of atonement for atrocities committed by the Japanese military from the final draft of a peace declaration on the 52nd anniversary of that city's destruction.
So John Goodlad of Shetland and Margaret Flaws of the Orkney island of Wyre led the drafting of this declaration: a clear statement of the northern isles' claim to recognition, subsequently endorsed by the signatures of scores of representative islanders.
On March 1, the first day of the convention, a committee began drafting a declaration of independence; on March 2 the declaration was presented and adopted; and on March 3 the delegates began signing it.
Visitors to PhinDeli's Web site will find a "Vietnamese Coffee Statement" drafted in the form of a Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, the pursuit of Happiness and enjoyment of Coffee.
In 2010, Marino banded together with other scientists, activists, and philosophers to draft a "Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans" declaring that no whales and dolphins "should be held in captivity … or removed from their natural environment".
Mason's work was known to Thomas Jefferson and influenced his drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
Ask them if I was reading Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, and his autobiography, which details the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, including his line attacking slavery that didn't make the cut.
Two-hundred-thirty-seven years after the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, American belief in -- or hope for -- God's presence in the political realm lives on.
