Fuck Ron Paul

[publius]

I can understand the reluctance to embrace this notion of history. The North won and we have Whig history. I advance it as a very logical analysis of the situation after the Civil War up to the present moment. Again, without color of law (aside from military law) agents acted.

I think it is a line of argumentation that makes sense-you do not have to. It is at best a Gedanken and offers as a hypothesis a line of reasoning that brings us to this hour. I am not a Constitutional Law expert, and I am content with presenting my case for 150 years of Federal Empire. I have no love for Paul or his opponents. My preference would be for different political arrangements. No doubt we would have to start all over.
===================

When the Southern states walked out of Congress on March 27, 1861, the quorum to conduct business under the Constitution was lost. When the South left, the only votes that Congress could lawfully take, under Parliamentary Law, were those to set the time to reconvene, take a vote to get a quorum and vote to adjourn and set a date, time, and place to reconvene at a later time, but instead, Congress abandoned the House and Senate without setting a date to reconvene. Under the parliamentary law of Congress, when this happened, Congress became sine die (pronounced see-na dee-a; literally “`without day”) and thus when Congress adjourned sine die, it ceased to exist as a lawful deliberative body, and the only lawful, constitutional power that could declare war was no longer lawful, or in session.

The Southern states, by virtue of their secession from the Union, also ceased to exist sine die, and some state legislatures in the Northern bloc also adjourned sine die, and thus, all the states which were parties to creating the Constitution ceased to exist. President Lincoln executed the first executive order written by any President on April 15, 1861, Executive Order 1, and the nation has been ruled by the President under executive order ever since. When Congress eventually did reconvene, it was reconvened under the military authority of the Commander-in-Chief and not by Rules of Order for Parliamentary bodies or by Constitutional Law. It should be pointed out that after the south surrendered there was no longer any organized Southern States belonging to the Union, only federally administered former States that became divided into military districts whose inhabitants were primarily citizens of the United States. The problem with the administration of these former rebel States was with President Andrew Johnson who drew fierce opposition from Republicans because he did not consult with Congress on his administration plans. Senator Jacob Howard called the temporary former rebel State governments set up by President Johnson “bogus governments” and “unconstitutional,” resting “upon military edicts of the president of the United States, so far as they have any foundation and operation.”

Capitalization — an insignificant change? Not when one is referring to the context of a legal document, it isn't. Such minor alterations have had major impacts on each subsequent generation born in this country. What the 41st Congress did with the passage of the Act of 1871 was create an entirely new document, a constitution for the government of the District of Columbia. The kind of government THEY created was a corporation. The new, altered Constitution serves as the constitution of the corporation, and not that of America. Think about that for a moment.

Incidentally, this corporate constitution does not benefit the Republic. It serves only to benefit the corporation. It does nothing good for you or me — and it operates outside of the original Constitution. Instead of absolute rights guaranteed under the "organic" Constitution, we now have "relative" rights or privileges. One example of this is the Sovereign's right to travel, which has been transformed under corporate government policy into a "privilege" which we must be licensed to engage in. This operates outside of the original Constitution. (USC 28 Section 3002, No. 15(a) “United States” means a Federal Corporation.) The United States was incorporated February 21, 1871 (16 Stat. 419, Chap. 62, 41st Congress, 3rd Session), the purpose being “an Act to provide a Government for the District of Columbia, reorganized June 8th, 1878, (20 Stat. 102, Chapter 180, 45th Congress, 2nd Session) as “an Act providing a permanent form of government for the District of Columbia” aka US Inc. Uniform Commercial Code, UCC9-307 (h) states “Location of United States. The United States is located in the District of Columbia. New laws for the District of Columbia were established and passed by Congress in 1871, supplanting those established Feb. 27, 1801 and May 3, 1802. The District of Columbia was re-incorporated in 1872, and all states in the Union were reformed as Franchisees of the Federal Corporation so that a new Union of the United States could be created. The key to when the states became Federal Franchisees is related to the date when such states enacted the Field Code in law.

[compared2what?]

The old nation died in the Civil War. The new nation came into being formally in 1871.

No. You're confused. This is what happened:

The seven (7) states that wanted to secede first tried to do it de jure and failed. That being the case, they (and three others) then tried taking the de facto route to secession that's commonly referred to today as the Civil War. They lost. Hostilities ceased. And the union as it existed prior to their unsuccessful de jure and de facto attempts at secession therefore remained intact and all parties were eventually restored to it. De jure.

Obviously, you can't lose a war without incurring very substantial losses. But there's no constitutional right to sore-losership. The confederacy lost. The former confederate states accepted their de jure restoration to the union. Reconstruction ended. Time kept on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future under the same constitutional principles established by the founders and according to the same constitutional procedures.

If you want to make a case to the contrary, please adduce some evidence in support of it that explains away the plainly observable continued existence of both constitutonal forms of government and constitutional governance between 1861 and the present.

And please, please don't do it by recurring to some claim that imbues the flags in courtrooms with magical properties that they do not possess on either a de jure or a de facto basis, unless you can also adduce evidence that they do. Because that would just be crazy talk.

Thanks!

We must go back to the year 1871, which was the beginning of the decline of the ... In essence, this Act formed the corporation known as THE UNITED STATES. ...
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm - Cached - Similar

^^I'll get to that one later, if I may.

Actually after the Brits cut the head off of Charles I, had a Lord Proptector, then a Restoration, then a Glorious Revolution they went through some changes in the Monarchy-just to have a Bank of England that the Stuarts never desired to see..

You're in luck! Maybe. It's kind of up to you.

But fwiw, those events all occurred during the only stretch of European history to which I can speak from a position of informed understanding and detailed knowledge.

So if anybody's interested in how what went down then went on to influence subsequent events in ways that ended up being consequential in the present, I can tell them.

If not: Yes, those things happened in that sequence, more or less. But you've really got to keep an eye out for those categorical errors that are bound to occur when you discuss historical figures in terms that only apply to characters of myth and legend -- eg, "the Stuarts" can't be said to have some kind of dimensionless and fundamental opposition to the Bank of England as if that was just a characteristic of Stuarts. Because Stuarts are not akin to Orcs. And the Bank of England is not akin to....I don't know. Orthanc or some other middle-earth institution or quasi-institution?

You get my point though, right? Stuarts don't have fixed natural properties. There were six English monarchs from the House of Stuart. They all had very eventful reigns. The Bank of England was not even a distant gleam in anyone's eye during three of them, and didn't exist when any but the last two were on the throne. It had virtually nothing to do with the ouster of James II. Nothing, in fact.

Commerce as we know it today was coming into its own at that time. And the evolution of commerce is very closely and intimately related to the evolution of empire. But that was primarily a shipping thing rather than a banking thing during the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as before and after them.

Also, "the Brits" didn't cut the head off Charles I. But only because there were none. It's not really all that big of a deal.

So a line of argument is simply that 1871 was a different nation than 1861. A different government.
And that government opened up the Gilded Age. Dixie was the old world, 1871 the New.

No, no, a thousand times no. The Gilded Age followed the Civil War but did not, strictly speaking, arise from a mythic change of government in 1871 that never occurred. That's wrong.

Republic to Empire.

No. Imperial Republic. From the get. Imperial forces just manifest differently over time.

[compared2what?]

I can understand the reluctance to embrace this notion of history. The North won and we have Whig history. I advance it as a very logical analysis of the situation after the Civil War up to the present moment. Again, without color of law (aside from military law) agents acted.

No. They did not. That's a myth. And yes. I am understandably reluctant to embrace myth as history.

I think it is a line of argumentation that makes sense-you do not have to. It is at best a Gedanken and offers as a hypothesis a line of reasoning that brings us to this hour. I am not a Constitutional Law expert, and I am content with presenting my case for 150 years of Federal Empire. I have no love for Paul or his opponents. My preference would be for different political arrangements. No doubt we would have to start all over.
===================

When the Southern states walked out of Congress on March 27, 1861, the quorum to conduct business under the Constitution was lost.

No. It wasn't. As I already explained to you that's a completely daft assertion. Among other things, the constitution empowers the President to convene Congress, for mercy's fucking sake. Always has.

When the South left, the only votes that Congress could lawfully take, under Parliamentary Law, were those to set the time to reconvene, take a vote to get a quorum and vote to adjourn and set a date, time, and place to reconvene at a later time, but instead, Congress abandoned the House and Senate without setting a date to reconvene. Under the parliamentary law of Congress, when this happened, Congress became sine die (pronounced see-na dee-a; literally “`without day”) and thus when Congress adjourned sine die, it ceased to exist as a lawful deliberative body, and the only lawful, constitutional power that could declare war was no longer lawful, or in session.

That has no implications under law for any Congress other than the 37th Congress, assuming that the subsequent Congresses were convened and elected lawfully and constitutionally.

You might not be aware of this, but under our system, penalties incurred under law only apply to the people and entities found to be in violation of them. It's not like the law runs out of law-juice or something after someone breaks it.

I'll just leave it at that for the moment, since I'm already repeating myself.

[compared2what?]

No. Explain corporate UNITED STATES.

The argument is as a result of the Civil War a new national system formed from the ruins of the old. As a result of this change, the UNITED STATES corporate system formed. This system of government in effect was now Imperial.

I can't explain that because the Civil War did not result in a new national system formed from the ruins of the old. We've been over this already. The confederacy lost. The union was restored in accordance with de jure procedures and principles.

Please point me to the law that invalidated all other laws yet (for some reason) required Congress to continue to go through the empty charade of complying with their procedures and principles for the next 150 years.

And if there isn't one, please try to grasp that the validity of every scrap and piece of constitutional, statutory and common law is not contingent on the inviolate and absolute maintenance of every single piece of it by all people always at every moment of time. People break the law and get away with it. Time marches on. Everybody involved dies. Several generations pass. If the law hasn't changed, it's still the law.

You're doing that conflation thing again. An adjournment sine die is not akin to eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

[barracuda]

law-juice

Yum.

[JackRiddler]

Please point me to the law that invalidated all other laws yet (for some reason) required Congress to continue to go through the empty charade of complying with their procedures and principles for the next 150 years.

That was the answer already, as I also said above, and there's no contesting it.

(But I can't tell you how much I appreciate the history lessons. I'll take the one about the Stuarts if no one else wants it. Which I can't imagine, after that performance.)

Not only that, but the Supreme Court keeps invoking the Constitution of 1787 in justifying its (not infrequently unconsitutional) decisions.

And when the deep state and parapolitical actors find ways to justify circumventions of the Constitution to themselves, they don't invoke UCC 50, but de facto necessity under varying states of emergency. The sovereign is (as Schmitt held, the fucker) that entity which can declare exceptions, and not a magical quality that exists independently of law or body. Institutions exist insofar as they are enacted, not in some netherworld of Platonic forms.

.

[publius]

And yet, history is myth. It does depend on your opinions.

It is a matter of FACT that the nation was re-organized in 1871. My interpretation need not be yours. We do not sit in history class, or on the bench, and we all know that much agreed upon history is hidden in mists. William of Orange backed by the Pope so France could be held in check; in American history the Maine is intentionally sunk; the Lusitania has munitions; Pearl Harbor set up by FDR. My argument is that the South left the Union and rump Union remained that won the war.

Re-admission to the Union also was not automatic for these conquered states. Martial law was invoked and the South divided into five military districts. The states would have to rewrite their constitutions to disqualify former Confederate officials from office and guarantee black males the right to vote. Additionally, they had to ratify the 14th Amendment. The registration of voters was to be overseen by the military governors.

The flag also changed to reflect the new disepnsation. The flag has one or more of the following:

Gold fringe along its borders (called "a badge")
Gold braided cord (tassel) hanging from pole
Ball on top of pole (last cannon ball fired)
Eagle on top of pole
Spear on top of pole
The flag above is Not described in Title 4 of USC and therefore is illegal on land except for maybe (1) the President since he is in charge of Naval Forces on high seas, and (2) naval offices and yards. President Eisenhower settled the debate on the width of the fringe. The so-called justification for a Naval/Maritime flag to be on land is that all land was under the high water mark at one time even if it was eons ago. Flags on poles flying at the same height as other flags have equal status. A flag flying higher than the flag below indicates superiority over the flag below. Note that corporate state flags fly below the US flag.

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 created a private corporation (hereinafter "Corp. U.S.") owned and operated by the actual government for the purpose of carrying out the business needs of the government under martial law. This was done under the constitutional authority for Congress to pass any law within the ten mile square of Washington, District of Columbia. In said Act, Corp. U.S. adopted their own constitution (United States Constitution), which was identical to the national Constitution (Constitution of the United States of America) except that it was missing the national constitution's 13th Amendment. The national constitution's 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are respectively numbered 14th, 15th and 16th amendments in their constitution.


]]]]]]]]]]]]]
The Union victory in effect ended the Confederacy’s claim to political independence. From the Union perspective there was no other party with whom to negotiate a peace settlement, which meant that it was up to the federal government to decide exactly how the defeated Confederate states were to be treated. Since the Constitution contained no provision for the legal separation of the states, there was naturally no provision included for reuniting a divided Union. What, then, was the legal status of the former Confederacy? Were the rebellious states still in the Union? The Supreme Court eventually ruled on the matter in an important and often overlooked decision, the 1869 case of Texas v. White. In that case, which arose over the matter of bonds issued by the Confederate government of Texas, the Court held that secession was inadmissible under the Constitution and that the Confederate states had never existed legally. In its decision the Court stated, “The Constitution … looks to be an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.” The argument hinged on the fact that the Articles of Confederation said that “the Union shall be perpetual,” and the preamble to the Constitution called for a “more perfect Union.” Nevertheless, the Court stated, Congress could dictate the terms under which the seceded states could rejoin the Union because of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” As Texas v. White was not decided until 1869, the president and Congress continued to wage a bitter fight over how best to reconstruct the Union.

By the time Congress returned on December 4, 1865, President Johnson was satisfied that reconstruction had been completed. The Radical Republicans who dominated Congress were not so sure. If the president asserted that the former Confederate states had been readmitted, however, how was Congress to assert its will? The answer lay in the Constitution, which states in Article I that, “Each house shall be the judge of the … qualifications of its own members.” When Southern legislators returned to Washington in December, 1865, they were turned away. In the first place, some of the newly-elected Congressmen had served as officers in the Confederate armies, and they belonged to the opposition Democratic Party. Furthermore, Republicans feared that they would lose control of Congress because the 3/5 rule for counting slaves was gone as a result of the Thirteenth Amendment—they would henceforth all be counted. By refusing to seat their congressional delegations, Congress effectively denied the former Confederate states readmission to the Union.
======
So it goes. 1865 is one thing, 1869 another. And surely 1871 is too something else.

[compared2what?]

Okay. Let's all learn something about indoctrination/brainwashing/thought-reform/coercive-persuasion or whatever you want to call that process.

We must go back to the year 1871, which was the beginning of the decline of the ... In essence, this Act formed the corporation known as THE UNITED STATES. ...
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm - Cached - Similar

The page on the other end of that link is a textbook example of the tactics described here:

LOADING THE LANGUAGE

the language of the totalist environment is characterized by the
thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers)
repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon
"the language of non-thought"
words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the
words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or
phrase

In fact, it has almost no other purpose or raison d'etre other than the repetition of words and phrases -- "sovereign," "common law," "Roman Civil Law," "the "organic" Constitution," etcetera -- that have a secret doctrinal meaning known only to insiders who can feel its truth. ("Do you feel like a sovereign? I don't.")

Anyway. It's a very well-constructed piece of work. Disturbingly so. The first two paragraphs are somewhat seductive/manipulative, but well within the ordinary parameters of emotional appeal that any writer might employ in order to attract the interest and attention of readers to whom they had something of value to say. After that, though, it's....I don't know. Textbook. Methodical. The first pivot-point is the command at the beginning of the third paragraph:

Don't point to that beloved parchment, the Constitution, as a symbol of your enduring freedom. It is representative of a form of government which seemingly no longer exists in this country today. The Constitution has been thrown out the window, the Republic shoved aside and replaced with a democracy. The thing is; most people in this country remain unaware that this is so because they simply do not know the truth — what lies beyond the myths. Your so-called government is not going to tell you, either.

But the whole thing is covertly coercive from there on. I mean, just try reading the above without thinking about anything other than the way you're being addressed. I'll wait.

Done? Okay.

Those are the same terms cops use to break down a suspect from whom they're trying to elicit a confession. Or that angry moms use when trying to impress upon small children some sense of how serious the consequences of their misbehavior might be. Or (any number of other analogies, you get the point.) What they're not is: The terms on which people address those whom they respect as equal and independent. Really, by the time you get to the end, there are points at which you're barely even being addressed at all, simply because the text has more or less crawled right into your mind and started speaking for you.

In short:

At best, that stuff about the corporate UNITED STATES and so on is false and misleading.

And at worst, it's part of a vile attempt to coopt of your true and fully justified feelings about being sold out by the government that not only lies to and misleads you, but also systematically works you over by alternately flattering and brow-beating you into a state of submission and reliance, then concludes by offering/promising you freedom.

Which you totally deserve and are entitled to (and, ftm, have) when it comes to determining your own political beliefs. BTW. So thanks for giving me a hearing, and I sincerely apologize in advance to anyone whose convictions I might just have offended.

I very much hope that there aren't any. But just in case there are:

Hey, you guys? I hope you realize that I really do respect the integrity of your choices no matter what they are. I'm just addressing you as I do my equals. Because that's what you are, as I see it.

[publius]

Maybe not so misleading as our Whig history.


There is No "Fourteenth Amendment"!
by
David Lawrence
U.S. News & World Report
September 27, 1957

A MISTAKEN BELIEF — that there is a valid article in the Constitution known as the "Fourteenth Amendment" — is responsible for the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and the ensuing controversy over desegregation in the public schools of America. No such amendment was ever legally ratified by three fourths of the States of the Union as required by the Constitution itself. The so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" was dubiously proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 20, 1868. The President shared that doubt. There were 37 States in the Union at the time, so ratification by at least 28 was necessary to make the amendment an integral part of the Constitution. Actually, only 21 States legally ratified it. So it failed of ratification.

The undisputed record, attested by official journals and the unanimous writings of historians, establishes these events as occurring in 1867 and 1868:

Outside the South, six States — New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, California, Delaware and Maryland — failed to ratify the proposed amendment.
In the South, ten States — Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana — by formal action of their legislatures, rejected it under the normal processes of civil law.
A total of 16 legislatures out of 37 failed legally to ratify the "Fourteenth Amendment."
Congress — which had deprived the Southern States of their seats in the Senate — did not lawfully pass the resolution of submission in the first instance.
The Southern States which had rejected the amendment were coerced by a federal statute passed in 1867 that took away the right to vote or hold office from all citizens who had served in the Confederate Army. Military governors were appointed and instructed to prepare the roll of voters. All this happened in spite of the presidential proclamation of amnesty previously issued by the President. New legislatures were thereupon chosen and forced to "ratify" under penalty of continued exile from the Union. In Louisiana, a General sent down from the North presided over the State legislature.
Abraham Lincoln had declared many times that the Union was "inseparable" and "indivisible." After his death, and when the war was over, the ratification by the Southern States of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been accepted as legal. But Congress in the 1867 law imposed the specific conditions under which the Southern States would be "entitled to representation in Congress."
Congress, in passing the 1867 law that declared the Southern States could not have their seats in either the Senate or House in the next session unless they ratified the "Fourteenth Amendment," took an unprecedented step. No such right — to compel a State by an act of Congress to ratify a constitutional amendment — is to be found anywhere in the Constitution. Nor has this procedure ever been sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States.
President Andrew Johnson publicly denounced this law as unconstitutional. But it was passed over his veto.
Secretary of State Seward was on the spot in July 1868 when the various "ratifications" of a spurious nature were placed before him. The legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey had notified him that they rescinded their earlier action of ratification. He said in his official proclamation that he was not authorized as Secretary of State "to determine and decide doubtful questions as to the authenticity of the organization of State legislatures or as to the power of any State legislature to recall a previous act or resolution of ratification." He added that the amendment was valid "if the resolutions of the legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey, ratifying the aforesaid amendment, are to be deemed as remaining of full force and effect, notwithstanding the subsequent resolutions of the legislatures of these States." This was a very big "if." It will be noted that the real issue, therefore, is not only whether the forced "ratification" by the ten Southern States was lawful, but whether the withdrawal by the legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey — two Northern States — was legal. The right of a State, by action of its legislature, to change its mind at any time before the final proclamation of ratification is issued by the Secretary of State has been confirmed in connection with other constitutional amendments.
The Oregon Legislature in October 1868 — three months after the Secretary's proclamation was issued — passed a rescinding resolution, which argued that the "Fourteenth Amendment" had not been ratified by three fourths of the States and that the "ratifications" in the Southern States were "usurpations, unconstitutional, revolutionary and void" and that, "until such ratification is completed, any State has a right to withdraw its assent to any proposed amendment."
What do the historians say about all this? The Encyclopedia Americana states:

"Reconstruction added humiliation to suffering.... Eight years of crime, fraud, and corruption followed and it was State legislatures composed of Negroes, carpetbaggers and scalawags who obeyed the orders of the generals and ratified the amendment."

W. E. Woodward, in his famous work, "A New American History?" published in 1936, says:

"To get a clear idea of the succession of events let us review [President Andrew] Johnson's actions in respect to the ex-Confederate States.

"In May, 1865, he issued a Proclamation of Amnesty to former rebels. Then he established provisional governments in all the Southern States. They were instructed to call Constitutional Conventions. They did. New State governments were elected. White men only had the suffrage the Fifteenth Amendment establishing equal voting rights had not yet been passed]. Senators and Representatives were chosen, but when they appeared at the opening of Congress they were refused admission. The State governments, however, continued to function during 1866.

"Now we are in 1867. In the early days of that year [Thaddeus] Stevens brought in, as chairman of the House Reconstruction Committee, a bill that proposed to sweep all the Southern State governments into the wastebasket. The South was to be put under military rule.

"The bill passed. It was vetoed by Johnson and passed again over his veto. In the Senate it was amended in such fashion that any State could escape from military rule and be restored to its full rights by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and admitting black as well as white men to the polls."

In challenging its constitutionality, President Andrew Johnson said in his veto message:

"I submit to Congress whether this measure is not in its whole character, scope and object without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly destructive of those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure."

Many historians have applauded Johnson's words. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, known today as "liberals," wrote in their book, "The Growth of the American Republic":

"Johnson returned the bill with a scorching message arguing the unconstitutionality of the whole thing, and most impartial students have agreed with his reasoning."

James Truslow Adams, another noted historian, writes in his "History of the United States":

"The Supreme Court had decided three months earlier, in the Milligan case, ... that military courts were unconstitutional except under such war conditions as might make the operation of civil courts impossible, but the President pointed out in vain that practically the whole of the new legislation was unconstitutional. ... There was even talk in Congress of impeaching the Supreme Court for its decisions! The legislature had run amok and was threatening both the Executive and the Judiciary."

Actually, President Johnson was impeached, but the move failed by one vote in the Senate.

The Supreme Court, in case after case, refused to pass on the illegal activities involved in "ratification." It said simply that they were acts of the "political departments of the Government." This, of course, was a convenient device of avoidance. The Court has adhered to that position ever since Reconstruction Days.

Andrew C. McLaughlin, whose "Constitutional History of the United States" is a standard work, writes:

"Can a State which is not a State and not recognized as such by Congress, perform the supreme duty of ratifying an amendment to the fundamental law? Or does a State — by congressional thinking — cease to be a State for some purposes but not for others?"

This is the tragic history of the so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" — a record that is a disgrace to free government and a "government of law."

Isn't the use of military force to override local government what we deplored in Hungary?

It is never too late to correct injustice. The people of America should have an opportunity to pass on an amendment to the Constitution that sets forth the right of the Federal Government to control education and regulate attendance at public schools either with federal power alone or concurrently with the States.

That's the honest way, the just way to deal with the problem of segregation or integration in the schools. Until such an amendment is adopted, the "Fourteenth Amendment" should be considered as null and void.

There is only one supreme tribunal — it is the people themselves. Their sovereign will is expressed through the procedures set forth in the Constitution itself.

[barracuda]

If you're going to posit the UNITED STATES as a corporation, then who, we must wonder, are the owners of that corporation? Some possible answers...

Maybe these guys:

Our nation went through a transformative event following the conflicts of the Civil War. The country had used all its credit and wealth on funding the war. It was in essence Bankrupt!

Through some fancy maneuvers done by International Bankers, European Interests put a yolk of debt and servitude on the American people. The Civil War had been financed and fought to put the young country under such a stranglehold. Simply to be able to use the energy, time, and labor of the population for its own greedy interests.

On the day of February 21, 1871 with the Forty-First Congress in session an Act was passed*. The title was "An Act To Provide A Government for the District of Columbia" also known as the "Act of 1871."

This Act stated that Congress, which it had no constitutional authority to do, created a separate form of government for the District of Columbia, which in reality is only a ten mile square piece of land.

The Congress knew that our country was bankrupt, so they made an arrangement with the International Bankers to run up a Debt to these Foreign Banks ( the Rothschilds of London were investing in many enterprises Globally).

One thing that everyone knows about banks is that they do not lend money simply to be kind. The only way that a Bank would enter into a contract is if it would benefit the Bank. Some kind of Collateral, or some kind of scheme that would put the population into servitude to the Banks would be necessary.

The sneaky and manipulating International Bankers would not lend money to our financially troubled nation without some stipulations. They came up with a devious scheme to gain control over the country that they had desired for a long time. The Founding Fathers detested these Foreign Entities and kept them at bay until the Act of 1871 was passed.

The Act formed the Corporation known as THE UNITED STATES. It is the capitalization that is important. This Corporation which was owned by Foreign Entities immediately did away with the original Constitution.

Or these persons of interest:

1871, February 21: Congress Passes an Act to Provide a Government for the District of Columbia, also known as the Act of 1871

With no constitutional authority to do so, Congress creates a separate form of government for the District of Columbia, a ten mile square parcel of land (see, Acts of the Forty-first Congress," Section 34, Session III, chapters 61 and 62).

The act -- passed when the country was weakened and financially depleted in the aftermath of the Civil War -- was a strategic move by foreign interests (international bankers) who were intent upon gaining a stranglehold on the coffers and neck of America.

Congress cut a deal with the international bankers (specifically Rothschilds of London) to incur a DEBT to said bankers. Because the bankers were not about to lend money to a floundering nation without serious stipulations, they devised a way to get their foot in the door of the United States.

The Act of 1871 formed a corporation called THE UNITED STATES. The corporation, OWNED by foreign interests, moved in and shoved the original Constitution into a dustbin. With the Act of 1871, the organic Constitution was defaced -- in effect vandalized and sabotage -- when the title was capitalized and the word "for" was changed to "of" in the title.

Or these likely suspects:

The freedom movement has wrongly assumed that we are under constitutional law, when in fact we were sold out and are under bankruptcy and international maritime commercial law.

Based on the 1933 bankruptcy of the United States. The U.S was dissolved at that time and turned over to the international bankers and converted into a commercial Corporation operating under international maritime commerce law and bankrupcy law.

I could go on, but I'm hoping you get the picture.

[vanlose kid]

^^

so the US was mortgaged to fund a war, the title was robosigned and is held by the bankers.

hmmm, what to do?

*

[compared2what?]

And yet, history is myth.

It can be used that way, for sure. Any particular historical work certainly might be wrong or mistaken wrt to points of historical fact. And it's not really all that uncommon for them to be nothing but one egregious howler after another, plus footnotes.

But apart from that, you're repurposing the word "myth" in a way that has nothing to do with what I meant by it when I said that I was understandably reluctant to embrace myth as history. (Or words to that effect.)

It does depend on your opinions.

Not really.

It is a matter of FACT that the nation was re-organized in 1871.

In a manner of speaking. But the United States of America gets reorganized continually, by design and in accordance with the principles outlined by the founders. As I understand it, your position is that it is a matter of FACT that the nation was reorganized in 1871 in some way that made it permanently and irredeemably an entirely different country with entirely new and wholly unconstitutional laws, precepts, principles and practices.

It's customary to adduce the evidence on which one asserts something as historical fact. So. If you're still asserting as FACT that all constitutional government ended forever at some point between 1861 and 1871, please adduce some supporting evidence.

Thanks.

My interpretation need not be yours.

As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.

We do not sit in history class, or on the bench, and we all know that much agreed upon history is hidden in mists.

Okay. Close enough. Forgive me for skipping over that flag-etcetera stuff. But I did ask you politely not to bother first, you know.

The Union victory in effect ended the Confederacy’s claim to political independence.

That suggests they had some kind of de jure or de facto basis for claiming political independence that the Union overrode via the use of violent force, which wasn't and isn't the case. The states in the Confederacy wanted to secede badly enough that they started a war over it. They lost. Eventually -- and this really happened quite a long time ago by now -- every state in the union once again enjoyed the same political independence as every other. You might feel that they're constitutionally entitled to more. And you're free to make the best case for that you can make and take it to the Supreme Court, which the founders vested with the power and responsibility to make such calls.

Seeing as you're such an originalist and all that, you should be happy about that.

From the Union perspective there was no other party with whom to negotiate a peace settlement, which meant that it was up to the federal government to decide exactly how the defeated Confederate states were to be treated. Since the Constitution contained no provision for the legal separation of the states, there was naturally no provision included for reuniting a divided Union. What, then, was the legal status of the former Confederacy?

I'll give you a hint. The Confederacy wasn't formed and didn't attack Fort Sumter de jure.

Were the rebellious states still in the Union? The Supreme Court eventually ruled on the matter in an important and often overlooked decision, the 1869 case of Texas v. White. In that case, which arose over the matter of bonds issued by the Confederate government of Texas, the Court held that secession was inadmissible under the Constitution and that the Confederate states had never existed legally. In its decision the Court stated, “The Constitution … looks to be an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.” The argument hinged on the fact that the Articles of Confederation said that “the Union shall be perpetual,” and the preamble to the Constitution called for a “more perfect Union.” Nevertheless, the Court stated, Congress could dictate the terms under which the seceded states could rejoin the Union because of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” As Texas v. White was not decided until 1869, the president and Congress continued to wage a bitter fight over how best to reconstruct the Union.

Yeah. There's more to it than that, though. They tried to go through Congress first. Before the war, I mean. But ultimately all legal avenues were exhausted, as it were. Plus some extra-lawful ones. I mean, when I say they lost, I really mean they lost.

That's why....Oops. Hold on, okay?

I'll be right back.

[compared2what?]

Sorry. As I was just saying:

That's why I kind of have a problem with that "claim to independence" thing when it's done in conjunction with (and under false color of) that WAAAH!-They-Took-Our-Constitutional-Rights-Awa-a-a-ay! thing, to be honest with you.

I mean, casting off the yoke of an oppressive government in order to build a better, freer land has a long and noble tradition, which I very much respect. But publius. Get real. Sitting around and whining about the parts of Title 50 that the mean old government might use to confiscate your property if you try and fail?

Sorry. It's just not a constructive exercise of political freedom or personal independence. Listen. It's like this. As Lincoln said in his first Inaugural Address:

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

And that just about sums it up. So get to it, as you prefer.

Hey! Also, as long as I'm in the neighborhood, guess what he went on to say next?

I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

So, you know. Those seven (7) states weren't exactly being threatened with the loss of all political independence by the bossy, intrusive federal government.

They just wanted to live in a nation that was founded on principles that didn't conflict with theirs. And that required them to secede from the one that was founded on the principles outlined in the then-organic Constitution.

Speaking of historical FACT.

By the time Congress returned on December 4, 1865, President Johnson was satisfied that reconstruction had been completed. The Radical Republicans who dominated Congress were not so sure. If the president asserted that the former Confederate states had been readmitted, however, how was Congress to assert its will? The answer lay in the Constitution, which states in Article I that, “Each house shall be the judge of the … qualifications of its own members.” When Southern legislators returned to Washington in December, 1865, they were turned away. In the first place, some of the newly-elected Congressmen had served as officers in the Confederate armies, and they belonged to the opposition Democratic Party. Furthermore, Republicans feared that they would lose control of Congress because the 3/5 rule for counting slaves was gone as a result of the Thirteenth Amendment—they would henceforth all be counted. By refusing to seat their congressional delegations, Congress effectively denied the former Confederate states readmission to the Union.
======
So it goes. 1865 is one thing, 1869 another. And surely 1871 is too something else.

True that. Same goes double for 1872 - 2012.

Cheers.

[compared2what?]

Maybe not so misleading as our Whig history.

Okay. Now you're just doing full-on Loaded Language your own self.

Let's get back to topic.

Fuck Ron Paul.

[compared2what?]

Please point me to the law that invalidated all other laws yet (for some reason) required Congress to continue to go through the empty charade of complying with their procedures and principles for the next 150 years.

That was the answer already, as I also said above, and there's no contesting it.

(But I can't tell you how much I appreciate the history lessons. I'll take the one about the Stuarts if no one else wants it. Which I can't imagine, after that performance.)

It's not really about the Stuarts, although some of them were pretty fun. But I'll PM you. Okay?

Not only that, but the Supreme Court keeps invoking the Constitution of 1787 in justifying its (not infrequently unconsitutional) decisions.

And when the deep state and parapolitical actors find ways to justify circumventions of the Constitution to themselves, they don't invoke UCC 50, but de facto necessity under varying states of emergency. The sovereign is (as Schmitt held, the fucker) that entity which can declare exceptions, and not a magical quality that exists independently of law or body. Institutions exist insofar as they are enacted, not in some netherworld of Platonic forms.

.

I know, RIGHT?

But...On a certain level, I do nevertheless see something buried under all that flag-fringe, adjournment-sine-die, I-got-my-degree-in-logic-and-rhetoric-at-the-University-of-Charles-Manson that I can recognize as real human grief over real human loss. And that would be true even if it was wittingly white-supremacist.

People just don't get over wars that were fought on their native land for many, many generations, if they ever do. Unless they emigrate. That's why most wars never really end.

It's horrible.