Good morning Mr Gary,
I have been reading a lot on this matter and have found several documents pertaining to this here is a brief detail for the following link:http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21745The
16th Amendment states in its entirety, "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."
While the legitimacy of the amendment's ratification has been debated since government began operating under it in 1913, the anti-tax movement has been gathering steam in recent years. Indeed, USA Today is again running a full-page ad by We the People in today's edition that explains the group's position.
The ad is available for viewing at the group's website.
"Exhaustive legal research from both state and national archives documented conclusively that the amendment did not even come close to being legally approved by the required number of states," the ad claims.
The ad lists examples of various states that did not properly ratify the amendment. Kentucky's legislature rejected the amendment, but Secretary of State Philander Knox counted Kentucky as having approved it, the ad asserts. Additionally, Oklahoma's legislature changed the amendment's wording so that it meant "just the opposite" of the original draft, according to the group's research. Minnesota did not submit any results or copy of its legislative vote to Knox, the group says, yet the nation's record keeper counted the state as one that approved the amendment.
"Legal scholars have agreed that if any state violated provisions of its own state constitution in the ratification process, its approval would be null and void," the ad continues. "At least 20 states were guilty of serious violations of their constitutions."
In fact, Bill Benson, a former criminal investigator for the Illinois Department of Revenue, began in 1984 to examine the ratification of the 16th Amendment, state by state. After a massive search of state archives and other repositories of the relevant documents, he determined that the 16th Amendment was never legally ratified. His work is contained in a two-volume book set called
"The Law That Never Was."
Nevertheless, the argument regarding the 16th Amendment's controversial ratification -- or lack thereof -- has been debated. After all, the original 13 states of the Union violated provisions of their own state constitutions by ratifying the U.S. Constitution and joining the union. In 1788, people argued the U.S. Constitution was illegal on that very point. But the Constitution is universally accepted today as having been legally ratified.