Posted on 12/24/2007 7:32:51 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
13TH AMENDMENT: "If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."
Rudy was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on Feburary 13th, 2002.
Like this one from the "Military Laws of the United States to which is prefixed the Constitution of the United States", published in 1825 under the authority of the War Department?
Your source claims (and it is essential to the case): "The Constitution limits consideration of constitutional amendments to states already in the union ...". There is no basis for this claim. The requirement of ratification by three fourths of the states can only refer to the states existing at the time of ratification; and this has been the policy of the Secretary of State and Congress from the first ten amendments on. "[P]age 964 of the Checklist of U.S. Public Documents ..." doesn't come close to proving otherwise.
Even on the "committee"'s showing, Virginia didn't ratify the amendment. At the very least, a ratification must include an expression of concurrence, given in a way that calls attention to the fact.
I’m not 100% sure I understood what you posted.
In 1810, when the amendment was proposed, there were 17 states in the Union; three fourths of 17 is 13. But by 1819, when the ratification is claimed to have been completed, the number of states had risen to 21, three fourths of which is 16. There is no claim that the amendment was ever ratified by 16 states. To get around this fact, the source you cite claims that ratification is limited to the states in the Union at the time the amendment was proposed. As I pointed out, this claim is contrary both to the words of the Constitution and to the consistent practice of the agencies concerned.
The claim is made that Virginia ratified the amendment by including it in the U.S. Constitution printed in its codified version of the Laws of Virginia. In the first place, the legislators by including the amendment did not express concurrence in it, but rather a (mistaken) belief that it had already been ratified. In the second place, whatever they meant to do, they did it in the most inconspicuous way possible.
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