Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

You mean like the way the Bill of Rights was not properly
ratified?


In what way was the Bill of Rights not properly ratified?


The "Sixteenth amendment was not properly ratified" argument
mostly revolves around differences in punctuation and wording
betweenthe extant written records of the Congress and various
state legislatures. There are also allegations that some states
the US Secretary of State credted with ratification , have no record
of having ratified the 16th amendment and/or other irregularities.
at the state level, including a failure of the governor to sign the
bill for one or more states.

Have I got that right?

I dscount the 'no evidence argument' as I have no idea how good
the record keeping was. The absence of an extant record does
not prove the measure did not pass and you would suppose that
if a particular state did not pass it, some legislators would have
raised the issue. There are no records of THAT, either, are there?
Not so much as a persoanl diary entry

The 'governor failed to sign argument' is specious because the
Constitution of the United States of America (CUSA) specifies
that amendments are to be ratified by the state legislatures with
no mention of the state governors.
The individual States cannot impose additional requirements for
amending he Constitution any more than they can change
the term of office or impose additional eligibility requiirements
for their Senators and Congresmen.

So this leaves us with the inconsistant wording and punctuation
argument, right?

In the case of the Sixteenth amenment, those inconsistencies
were so trivial as to not allow for any inconsistency in
interpretation,
indeed, we have no way of telling how precisely the words spoken
on the floor of those legislative bodies agreed with the words recorded
and enterred into the records by the clerks. It is a safe bet that
pretty much all legislation of that era, and all previous amendments
as well as the various copies of the original Constitution had similar
inconsistencies particularly when you consider that the promulgation
and acceptance of unifrom standards for English spelling, punctuation
and grammar in legal and academic circles post-date the Constitution
itself.

However, even accepting that, the Bill of Rights was exceptional.

The Bill of Rights passed by the Congress and submitted to the
States for ratification was not a bill of ten amendments, it was
one (1) amendment with twelve (12) articles. That amendment
was never ratified by the requisite number of states. Some
states ratified a shorter version, with only ten articles. That
shorter version was accepted and became part of the CUSA.

That Bill of Rights, with ten articles was not passed by the
Congress, and then ratified requisite number of states.
The alleged errors that supposedly invalidate the passage of the
SIxteenth Amendment pale by comparison.

The people who argue the sixteenth amendment was invalid,
(and I note that you are not he person who introduced that
notion into this thread) by and large, refuse to discuss this
as they are not honest people.

Later when more amendments passed the enumeration was
changed so that the ten articles of the first amendment became
the first ten amendments. That change was also made without
ratification by the states, and although it plainly has no bearing
on the validity of those or subsequent amendments that change
still looms large when compared with the arguments advanced
against the validity of the sixteenth amendment.

--

FF