More stuff on "ratification" of 16th A:
http://www.guam.net/les/txt2/attach34.txt
http://www.trustclarks.com/theman.html
http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html#ratification
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The 16th Amendment was not properly ratified.
Although the Constitution describes how to ratify amendments, it doesn't say
how we know when an amendment has been ratified. After some confusion
about the status of some amendments (including the infamous "Titles of
Nobility" amendment that fell at least one state short of ratification, but
appeared in numerous copies of the Constitution in the early and middle
1800's), Congress decided that the Secretary of State should certify what
amendments have been ratified.
The argument that the 16th Amendment was not ratified is best explained (and
refuted) by this quotation from U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250 (7th Cir. 1986),
cert. den. 107 S.Ct. 187 (1986):
"Thomas is a tax protester, and one of his arguments is that he did
not need to file tax returns because the sixteenth amendment is not
part of the constitution. It was not properly ratified, Thomas insists,
repeating the argument of W. Benson & M. Beckman, The Law That
Never Was (1985). Benson and Beckman review the documents
concerning the states' ratification of the sixteenth amendment and
conclude that only four states ratified the sixteenth amendment; they
insist that the official promulgation of that amendment by Secretary
of State Knox in 1913 is therefore void.
"Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered
something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight
states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal
instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota
notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we
consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four
instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly
as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction,
capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress
transmitted to the states was: "The Congress shall have power to lay
and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without
apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any
census or enumeration." Many of the instruments neglected to
capitalize "States," and some capitalized other words instead. The
instrument from Illinois had "remuneration" in place of
"enumeration"; the instrument from Missouri substituted "levy" for
"lay"; the instrument from Washington had "income" not "incomes";
others made similar blunders.
"Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the
same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox
considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State
drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and--taking into
account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of
earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial
problems--advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare
the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.
"Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts
that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document
effective, the Supreme Court follows the "enrolled bill rule." If a
legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the
appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly
adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 36 L.Ed. 294, 12 S.Ct. 495
(1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional
amendments. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 66 L.Ed. 505, 42
S.Ct. 217 (1922), which treats as conclusive the declaration of the
Secretary of State that the nineteenth amendment had been
adopted. In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6
(7th Cir. 1986), we relied on Leser, as well as the inconsequential
nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the
effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to
Thomas's. See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385,
59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments
may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states
had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not
transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a
decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's
decision is now beyond review."
It has also been claimed that the votes of Georgia legislature were recorded
incorrectly and that Georgia actually rejected the amendment, contrary to
Knox's report. However, no Congressman or other official from Georgia has
ever complained about the "error" and, even if there was an error and Georgia
did not ratify the amendment, there would still have been thirty-seven
ratifications, one more than the thirty-six required. (Article V of the Constitution
requires that amendments to the Constitution be approved by the legislatures of
three fourths of the states, and there were forty-eight states in 1913.)
[/quote]
http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html
IRS "Attack manual":
http://members.aol.com/rmckin6412/liberty/volume20.htm
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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
