To
OneWingedShark:
I've taken the time to read through your
list of proposed amendments (pdf). While generally well thought-out, there are concerns about each one, but there is particularly a concern, actually extreme alarm. regarding one of them, the Grand Jury Amendment. Below are a general response to your amendments including an explanation why what you indicate of Grand Juries cannot be allowed to happen.
Tax Reform: Part of the fundamental reason for rejecting a personal income tax, is that our personal income is not "profit", but rather the equal exchange of our income for labor (generally at a rate established by fair market supply and demand). By taxing any portion of our personal earnings from employment, even yours limited to 10%, it is fundamentally indicating that our labor is of no value, and acting as a punitive measure against an employed and productive society.
While simply repealing the 16th Amendment may seem like a good idea to some, the fact is that the fundamental meaning of what is a "direct tax" has been profoundly corrupted, moving personal earnings from the category of direct taxation, to the category of an indirect excise tax. Mere months after the ratification of the 16th Amendment, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co (1916), in which the Court stated that the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation but simply prevented the courts from taking the power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged. This is in direct conflict with the recognition of our founders, who at the
Pennsylvania ratification convention, December 12, 1787, recognized the primary definition of direct taxation to include monies earned from "trades and occupations" and recognized the ability to tax these as being tyrannous, indicating such direct taxation to be
"so congenial to the nature of despotism, that it has ever been a favorite under such governments."
Simply repealing the 16th Amendment will not begin to ensure the proper outcome, as these despots have corrupted the plain, intended meaning of words.
While I agree that a tax on munitions is indeed an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, you may want to consider rephrasing your first sentence of Section 3 indicating "The second amendment is hereby recognized as restricting the power of taxation, both federal and state, ..." as this is likely to be interpreted by many to be a call for the force of arms to prohibit taxation.
Fiscal Responsibility: While fiscal responsibility by government is a necessary consideration, the conversion of the dollar to a commodity-based value, such as gold, particularly doing so outright at this point in time, is a hazardous endeavor that will result in the dollar fluctuating enormously, particularly at the onset. There is also cause for serious question that the federal government has any physical gold being held at this time. Furthermore, real economics has repeatedly shown over history that the value of a currency does not need to be directly tied to a commodity, particularly when the currency is limited to a stable mount relative to the population; the American colonials demonstrated this themselves with colonial script. The root of the problem is that our dollar is debt-based, and to a private institution (Federal Reserve), when that institution has no legitmate claim to any real debt acquired by its creation of a currency, and certainly not to that currency's full value.
Commerce Clause: The federal government's authority under the Commerce Clause was already clearly defined by the Constitution itself in Article 1, Sections 8, 9 and 10, as the authority to "make regular", or to make uniform, and not any sort of authority to ply anything that might travel across State boundaries with regulation, dictation, and taxation.
More here.
Grand Jury Amendment: I cannot emphasize in strong enough terms that your indications about the Grand Jury being
"an independent, self-directing body of inquisitors" is extremely misguided, and way beyond being merely dangerous, to being entirely corruptive to the rule of law,resulting in the validation what is known as a "Kangaroo Court" and mob rule. But you've done worse than that. You've mad that mob rule the supreme and incontestable law of the land!
What you've done is recreate an unrestrained "inquisition" under the color of law.
These misguided beliefs are currently being popularized by the sovereign citizen movement, and among groups like National Liberty Alliance, and others who are currently promoting an unhinged authority of the "common law" grand juries, something which has ZERO basis in principle or historical fact, and for good reason.
In Justice Scalia's extended discussion of the Grand Jury in U.S. vs Williams, Scalia provides historical reference for the fact that a grand jury only has authority over that body itself, in order to deliberate upon anything that it might choose. However once that Grand Jury seeks to act outside of its own body, interviewing witnesses and obtaining evidence, then the Grand Jury must appeal to the authority of the Court itself for any authority to do so. Scalia recognizes that allowing any other authority beyond that, would be allowing the Grand Jury to violate individual liberties with impunity.
You further compound the problem by indicating that "any judge or prosecutor" failing to act upon such a Grand Jury's indication, shall be evicted from office.
Perhaps you need to pause and recognize that the cliche,
"A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich", is not positive indication. And then recognize that "ham sandwich" might one day be you.
To put your ill-conceived proposal into perspective: imagine the hell tht would be unleashed
if the angry mobs in Ferguson, Missouri could form their own independent Grand Jury, and then compel the State Prosecutor to harge, and perhaps even indict officer Wilson for First Degree Murder, then
NONE OF US would ever, not at any time, be secure in the legal system from entirely unrestrained personal attack, for whatever reason or no reason whatsoever, under the unrestrained authority of a Grand Jury. The objective rule of law would become entirely destroyed, and any hope of our freedoms and property being secured entirely gone!
What you've essentially validated here is populist rule, and not even by a very big majority mob either! This is entirely what this nation's founders stood against and intended to
entirely prohibit by every structure of the Constitution!
To understand more why this is such fatal mistake, read
"Are Common Law Grand Juries Valid?"
Overall, these amendments underscore the extreme hazard in allowing unknown and unanswerable delegates, to indiscriminately alter the Constitution by populist mass agreement, particularly when such mass gatherings are notoriously absent moderation, restraint, reason, wisdom and intelligence.
OneWingedShark --
I just noticed another serious error of understanding in
your proposed amendments, under "Grand Jury Amendment", section VIII where you indicate:
"The text of the Constitution should not be arbitrarily reinterpreted and, as the judiciary does such with its doctrine of incorporation, the Fourteenth amendment is hereby repealed."
While most certainly the Constitution should not be arbitrarily reinterpreted, by referencing the "doctrine of incorporation" applied to the 14th Amendment, you've actually rejected one corruption by the Court, only to to validate an earlier corruption to the principle of this country.
Inherent to the referenced rejection of the"doctrine of incorporation" is that the several States are not obligated to recognize our unalienable individual rights. Somehow the unalienable rights of our founders became highly alienable by States. This was never their intent.
This idea stems from a profound fundamental corruption that the Bill of Rights actually grants us our rights, and they are thereby only applicable to the federal government itself. The Constitution does not grant us those rights, but rather only recognizes what exist beyond the Constitution, only therein phrasing those rights in regard to the structure of the federal government.
This earlier corruption stemmed from Barron vs Baltimore (1833), in which the court indicated that because States are sovereign entities, they are somehow immune to any obligation to persons and their property -- in other words, States can make our rights and property highly alienable, and we've created 50 new little monarchies. Such a corrupt principle is entirely in conflict with everything in the Constitution and all the founder's writings. From this corruption, we have States and municipalities severely infringing on our rights to keep and bear arms (notice I didn't say "Second Amendment right"), and confiscating our property without compensation or trial, under a wide range of excuses.
Those rights are every bit as applicable to the State governments, as they are the federal. It's just that the federal government should be prohibited from any policing authority over those rights.