Some context: https://historyheist.com/glossary/amendment-16/
On June 17th, 1909, United States Senator Norris Brown of Nebraska proposed the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was allegedly fraudulently ratified on February 25th, 1913. The federal government rests its authority to collect income tax on the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the federal income tax amendment.
“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.”
—The 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
After an extensive year-long nationwide research project, William J. Benson discovered that the 16th Amendment was not ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states and that nevertheless Secretary of State Philander Knox had fraudulently declared ratification.
It was a shocking revelation; it reached deep to the core of our American system of governance.
The Discovery
Article V of the U.S. Constitution defines the ratification process and requires three-fourths of the states to ratify any amendment proposed by Congress. There were forty-eight states in the American Union in 1913, meaning that affirmative action of thirty-six was necessary for ratification. In February 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox proclaimed that thirty-eight had ratified the Amendment.
In 1984 Bill Benson began a research project, never before performed, to investigate the process of ratification of the 16th Amendment. After traveling to the capitols of the New England states and reviewing the journals of the state legislative bodies, he saw that many states had not ratified. He continued his research at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; it was here that Bill found his Golden Key.
This damning piece of evidence is a sixteen-page memorandum from the Solicitor of the Department of State, among whose duties is the provision of legal opinions for the Secretary of State. In this memorandum, the Solicitor lists the many errors he found in the ratification process.
These four states are among the thirty-eight from which Philander Knox claimed ratification:
California: The legislature never recorded any vote on any proposal to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress.
Kentucky: The Senate voted on the resolution, but rejected it by a vote of nine in favor and twenty-two opposed.
Minnesota: The State sent nothing to the Secretary of State in Washington.
Oklahoma: The Senate amended the language of the 16th Amendment to have a precisely opposite meaning.4
When his project was finished at the end of 1984, Bill had visited the capitol of every state from 1913 and knew that not a single one had actually and legally ratified the proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-three states engaged in the unauthorized activity of altering the language of an amendment proposed by Congress, a power that the states do not possess.
Since thirty-six states were needed for ratification, the failure of thirteen to ratify was fatal to the Amendment. This occurs within the major (first three) defects tabulated in Defects in Ratification of the 16th Amendment. Even if we were to ignore defects of spelling, capitalization and punctuation, we would still have only two states which successfully ratified.
Bill Benson’s findings, published in “The Law That Never Was,” make a convincing case that the 16th amendment was not legally ratified and that Secretary of State Philander Knox was not merely in error, but committed fraud when he declared it ratified in February 1913. What follows is a summary of some of the major findings for many of the states, showing that their ratifications were not legal and should not have been counted.
The 16th amendment had been sent out in 1909 to the state governors for ratification by the state legislatures after having been passed by Congress. There were 48 states at that time, and three-fourths, or 36, of them were required to give their approval in order for it to be ratified. The process took almost the whole term of the Taft administration, from 1909 to 1913.
Knox had received responses from 42 states when he declared the 16th amendment ratified on February 25, 1913, just a few days before leaving office to make way for the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Knox acknowledged that four of those states (Utah, Conn, R.I. and N.H.) had rejected it, and he counted 38 states as having approved it. We will now examine some of the key evidence Bill Benson found regarding the approval of the amendment in many of those states.
In Kentucky, the legislature acted on the amendment without even having received it from the governor (the governor of each state was to transmit the proposed amendment to the state legislature). The version of the amendment that the Kentucky legislature made up and acted upon omitted the words “on income” from the text, so they weren’t even voting on an income tax! When they straightened that out (with the help of the governor), the Kentucky senate rejected the amendment. Yet Philander Knox counted Kentucky as approving it!
In Oklahoma, the legislature changed the wording of the amendment so that its meaning was virtually the opposite of what was intended by Congress, and this was the version they sent back to Knox. Yet Knox counted Oklahoma as approving it, despite a memo from his chief legal counsel, Reuben Clark, that states were not allowed to change it in any way.
Attorneys who have studied the subject have agreed that Kentucky and Oklahoma should not have been counted as approvals by Philander Knox, and, moreover, if any state could be shown to have violated its own state constitution or laws in its approval process, then that state’s approval would have to be thrown out. That gets us past the “presumptive conclusion” argument, which says that the actions of an executive official cannot be judged by a court, and admits that Knox could be wrong.
If we subtract Kentucky and Oklahoma from the 38 approvals above, the count of valid approvals falls to 36, the exact number needed for ratification. If any more states can be shown to have had invalid approvals, the 16th amendment must be regarded as null and void.
The state constitution of Tennessee prohibited the state legislature from acting on any proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution sent by Congress until after the next election of state legislators. The intent, of course, is to give the proposed amendment a chance to become an issue in the state legislative elections so that the people can have a voice in determining the outcome. It also provides a cooling off period to reduce the tendency to approve an idea just because it happens to be the moment’s trend. You’ve probably already guessed that the Tennessee legislature did not hold off on voting for the amendment until after the next election, and you’d be right – they didn’t; hence, they acted upon it illegally before they were authorized to do so. They also violated their own state constitution by failing to read the resolution on three different days as prescribed by Article II, Section 18. These state constitutional violations make their approval of the amendment null and void. Their approval is and was invalid, and it brings the number of approving states down to 35, one less than required for ratification.
Texas and Louisiana violated provisions in their state constitutions prohibiting the legislatures from empowering the federal government with any additional taxing authority. Now the number is down to 33.
Twelve other states, besides Tennessee, violated provisions in their constitutions requiring that a bill be read on three different days before voting on it. This is not a trivial requirement. It allows for a cooling off period; it enables members who may be absent one day to be present on another; it allows for a better familiarity with, and understanding of, the measure under consideration, since some members may not always read a bill or resolution before voting on it (believe it or not!). States violating this procedure were: Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, West Virginia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Colorado, and Illinois. Now the number is reduced to 21 states legally ratifying the amendment.
When Secretary Knox transmitted the proposed amendment to the states, official certified and sealed copies were sent. Likewise, when state results were returned to Knox, it was required that the documents, including the resolution that was actually approved, be properly certified, signed, and sealed by the appropriate official(s). This is no more than any ordinary citizen has to do in filing any legal document, so that it’s authenticity is assured; otherwise it is not acceptable and is meaningless. How much more important it is to authenticate a constitutional amendment! Yet a number of states did not do this, returning uncertified, unsigned, and/or unsealed copies, and did not rectify their negligence even after being reminded and warned by Knox. The most egregious offenders were Ohio, California, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Minnesota – which did not send any copy at all, so Knox could not have known what they even voted on! Since four of these states were already disqualified above, California is now subtracted from the list of valid approvals, reducing it to 20.
These last five states, along with Kentucky and Oklahoma, have particularly strong implications with regard to the fraud charge against Knox, in that he cannot be excused for not knowing they shouldn’t have been counted. Why was he in such a hurry? Why did he not demand that they send proper documentation? They never did.
Further review would make the list dwindle down much more, but with the number down to 20, sixteen fewer than required, this is a suitable place to rest, without getting into the matter of several states whose constitutions limited the taxing authority of their legislatures, which could not give to the federal govern authority they did not have.
The results from the six states Knox had not heard from at the time he made his proclamation do not affect the conclusion that the amendment was not legally ratified. Of those six: two (Virginia and Pennsylvania) he never did hear from, because they ignored the proposed amendment; Florida rejected it; two others (Vermont and Massachusetts) had rejected it much earlier by recorded votes, but, strangely, submitted to the Secretary within a few days of his ratification proclamation that they had passed it (without recorded votes); West Virginia had purportedly approved it at the end of January 1913, but its notification had not yet been received (remember that West Virginia had violated its own constitution, as noted above).
Plane spins into ground. Paper announces that there were no survivors. Like Dah!
Reminds me of the humorous take this guy has @ 33:28
https://rumble.com/v5jc5t9-boomer-triggers-gen-z-snowflakes.-brad-upton.html
But this could never happen in America, yea, right! This fire could consume the U.S. of A. in a short time unless we stamp out the burning embers now.
Let me pose this argument: We hear stern endless arguments about why Iran can never be allowed to posses nukes. Is it the dirt, the land, something about the geography of that area that makes having nuclear weapons so dangerous, hell no, it the people, the radical ideology of Muslim rule that makes possession of nukes not a good idea. (I know it's much more complex than I state here.)
So I have to ask, what is the difference between a historically Muslim lead country possessing nukes, and an majority christian, Anglo country that has been taken over by majority Muslim rule, possessing nukes.
This is why I think it imperative that the U.S., Russia, China, India form a friendly economic/military alliance. This would enable each country to have a effective missile shield without that defense sheild being a threat to the deterrence of the other nuclear threat, but would negate the threat and provide deterrence of small nuclear actor, like a Muslim ruled nuclear UK.
Notwithstanding the value of all the arguments/statements in comments below, I have always been of the belief that if you do something in life, even bad stuff that could embarrass you, you need to be man enough to own up to it, if someone throws it up in your face. By golly, it's you that did it, then own up to it. Take what ever punishment come with owning it, and move on clean.
So, Just Stop Greasing Protestors Palms, was the key to ending Just Stop Oil.
And by my counter those arrested so far would be PRECISELY ZERO!
"... bloat will return faster than anyone can imagine."
Think Glutton coming off a diet, or Alcoholic falling off the wagon.
Instead of Nitter, in my view it's easier to use xcancel. I think it might be same thing. Just makes it easier to change url.
For example:
https://x.com/buffalobutt69/status/1905096561048088973
Becomes:
https://xcancel.com/buffalobutt69/status/1905096561048088973
Still appears to be shutdown.
Definitely Clownworld material. Nothing against you fren, but can't quite understand why it deserves sticky since this dufuss is playing no role in the peace negotiations.
Loads of information here.
Read under section CIA PROGRAMS Page 3 click file to view the pigs-blood-interrogation (doc).
An excerpt:
In 1909, before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks on the United States forces in the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, by Muslim extremists. General "Black Jack" Pershing was the appointed military governor of the Moro Province. He captured 50 terrorists and ordered them to be tied to posts for execution. Since all the prisoners were Muslim, he asked his men to bring two pigs and slaughter them in front of the prisoners. He then proceeded by dipping bullets into the pig’s blood.
In the process he executed 49 of the terrorists by firing squad. Then, the soldiers dug a big hole in the ground and dumped in the terrorists’ bodies and covered them in pig’s blood and viscera. The last man was set free. For 42 years there was not a single Muslim attack anywhere in the world.
His rationale was quite simple and effective. Since a radical Muslim is willing to give his life for his religion in a Jihad war, killing him would not make much difference. He would be seen as a martyr (shahada).
But the General knew that all Muslims believe in eternal life after death with 72 virgins waiting for them in paradise. He also knew that those that embrace Jihad usually prepare themselves physically and spiritually in case they die in combat.
Since the pig is considered forbidden food (haram) in Islam, Pershing introduced this variable to thwart their hopes to enter Allah’s kingdom. The pig’s blood automatically nullified any prior purification by contaminating their bodies.
My interrogation technique is quite simple. I follow General Pershing’s example and order a pig to be slaughtered near the prisoner. The blood of the animal run's freely toward the prisoner's feet. He will immediately lift his knees to avoid making contact with it. I fill a syringe with the pig’s blood and threaten to inject him in the arm. The prisoner will talk -- and quickly.
Fair? Depends on your perspective. Effective? Extremely.
My dad, born in 22 always said, when you hear someone referring to yesteryear's as the good-ole-days, you can be sure they never lived during that time. He would say, "The good-old-days are what we are living right now."
Probably could use an AI tool to make this happen. Just tell the AI thang to replace the faces.
Sorry I stepped on you prior drop of this. I tried to search to see of already posted.
C.S. Lewis:
"When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend."
"It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler?"
That's the question that scares me. As Lewis puts it: "One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at."
What sins have I committed in my heart that did not in reality rise to murder, genocide, or sexual abuse simply because I had not the power to carry my thoughts through to action. When all is stripped away, revealed, what does God see?
I searched on word "El Salvador" prior to posting and did not find this, don't know why.
These people know who to put the P (Punishment) back into the work Prison.
Fren, the common reader would think this story in the NYT is an admission by the publication that they made a mistake, and are now coming clean. However we that know what is going on, see this story from NYT for what it is, an attempt to take the explosive truth that is coming out, hijack and divert the blame, to paint the crimes, the cover up as just due to ignorance and not malice intent.
This is a very old video, that someone is trying to push off as current.
We, in my view, need to do better job of vetting this stuff before posting what is essentially fake news.
So CNN can now predict the future?
Huh? Your kidding right? The defining document, our Constitution, that governs our entire country is from 1700's.
Well there is a big difference between it being declassified, and that declassified info making it out to public.
You know as well as I do that declassification means nothing if siloed agencies never release the info, or release it with mostly redacted information.
I sure would not want to be you in the woods with that ape when he finds out who you been comparing him to.
What is the purpose of this post? Is it to show us that someone we do not know, made a claim that is not true.
https://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/
In 1984 William J. Benson of South Holland, Illinois, began an investigation of the process of ratification of the 16th Amendment, to determine if the amendment had lawfully been made a part of the constitution. To undertake such a task, never before performed, required the review of all documents stored in various state archives, state law libraries, legislative libraries and offices of the secretaries of states, clerks of the houses and secretaries to the senates, that related to the method by which the States in the American Union in 1913 allegedly approved the amendment as a part of the constitution. Undaunted by the enormity of such a research project, Bill spent virtually the entire year traveling to the state capitols to find dusty old records regarding the actions of the states taken to adopt the amendment. This was an arduous task that Bill had been well trained for during his years as an investigator with the Illinois Department of Revenue.
The Premise
The federal government rests its authority to collect income tax on the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the federal income tax amendment—which was allegedly ratified in 1913. In 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that a similar federal income tax act adopted in 1894 was unconstitutional. This deprived the federal government of a potential source of tax revenue. In 1909, the 16th Amendment was proposed by Congress to circumvent that decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. By 1913, the process of ratification of the amendment was claimed to have been completed. Because of the existence of this amendment, the federal government lays claim to the power to collect this tax from all of us.
The Discovery
Starting in January 1984, Bill went first to the capitols of the New England states and performed his investigative research, using the journals of the various state legislative bodies to find out how these states acted upon the proposal by Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to permit a federal income tax law. After review of these records, he began to see that serious problems existed as to whether these states had legally ratified the same amendment which had been proposed by Congress. When examination of the records of about 20 states showed that many had not ratified the amendment and that information regarding the action taken by these States had been sent to the U.S. Secretary of State, he determined that records in Washington, D.C. most probably existed to prove the point.
In August 1984, Bill traveled to Washington, D.C. to research the historical records in the National Archives. After several days of pursuing fruitless leads, he finally found a book that had contained within it all federal records which had been prepared during the process of amending the Constitution by the 16th Amendment. This proved to be an exceptional discovery because those documents revealed that a man named Philander Chase Knox, the Secretary of State in 1913, was fully aware that the amendment had not been ratified nonetheless. See Bill Benson's Golden Key. After making this important discovery, Bill decideded it was essential that he also study the records of all other states which the federal government claimed had ratified the amendment.
In September 1984, Bill started investigating the remainder of the states and completed the project on December 1984. When this year long project was finished at the end of 1984, Bill knew that not a single state had actually and legally ratified the proposal to amend the Constitution in the manner required by law. Such a conclusion obviously meant that the federal government lacked the power to legally impose and collect the federal income tax. See defects tabulated in Defects in Ratification of the 16th Amendment.
To demonstrate the merits of this argument, an examination of the evidence uncovered by Bill is essential. The federal government claims that the State of Kentucky was the second state to ratify the amendment, such action taking place on February 8, 1910. But, the records of the State of Kentucky reveal a far different picture. These records show that the Kentucky House proposed a resolution to adopt the amendment and then sent that resolution to the Senate in early February 1910. On February 8, 1910, the Kentucky Senate voted upon that resolution, but rejected it by a vote of 9 in favor and 22 opposed. The Kentucky Senate never did ratify that amendment, but federal officials, being in possession of documents showing this rejection, fraudulently claimed otherwise.
A second interesting situation involves the State of Oklahoma. Here, this proposed amendment was passed by the Oklahoma House and the language of the resolution perfectly matched the one passed by Congress. However, the Oklahoma Senate obviously disliked what Congress had proposed, so it amended the language of the 16th Amendment in such a fashion as to have a precisely opposite meaning. After all was settled and done in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Legislature wanted an amendment which meant something entirely different than that which was proposed by Congress.
What happened in California reveals a comedy of errors. That legislative assembly never recorded any vote upon any proposal to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress. However, assuming that a nonexistent vote was taken, whatever California did adopt bore no resemblance to what Congress had proposed. And many states engaged in the unauthorized activity of amending the language of the amendment proposed by congress, a power that these states did not possess.
The State of Minnesota sent nothing to the Secretary of State in Washington, but this did not deter Philander Knox as he claimed that Minnesota ratified the amendment regardless of the absence of any documentation from the State of Minnesota.
The Fraud
Article V of the U.S. Constitution controls the amending process, which requires that three-fourths of the States ratify any amendment proposed by Congress. In 1913, there were 48 States in the American Union, so to adopt any amendment required the affirmative act of 36 states. In February 1913, Knox issued a proclamation claiming that 38 states had ratified the amendment, including Kentucky, California and Oklahoma. But, as previously shown, Kentucky had rejected the amendment, California had not voted on it and Oklahoma wanted something entirely different. If just these 3 states are excluded from the court of those which ratified, then the amendment was not legally adopted, the number of ratifying States being only 35. But, then again, a total of 11 states failed to vote on the amendment, 33 changed the language of the amendment and Minnesota sent in nothing. If the process of the adoption of the amendment is subjected to strict legal scrutiny the amendment was adopted by none.
Today, the federal government pretends that it has all encompassing power to tax the income of everyone and that the only way to change this system is to vote for congressmen who promise to modify or, even more unlikely, to repeal these laws. The American public needs to be apprised that another alternative exists and that it is entirely possible to challenge the very foundation of this taxing power upon the grounds that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was never adopted. This challenge can be effectively made by exercising your rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.