The internet can be a very useful tool for researchers of any area of the US Constitution, however, it is also a source used by many useful idiots who, because they have gamed some sort of collegiate degree, they believe themselves to be the ultimate authority in textual interpretation of the US Constitution and its subsequent statutes at large. Take the website supremelaw.org for example. The website is owned by Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S. who’s website was created for the sole purpose of making a living by supposedly teaching constitutional law when in fact, it is nothing but a course in understanding Mr. Mitchell’s uneducated view of the US Constitution.
What lead me to Mr. Mitchell’s website was a search I was doing in regards to the Public Salary Tax Act of 1939 as it pertains to the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution. What Mr. Mitchell would have us believe is that the 14th Amendment changed the relationship & nature of citizenship in the 50 united States of America in that it transformed the ‘natural born citizens’ residing in any of the 50 states into ‘aliens’ for the purpose of taxation thereby alienating the creators from the creation. Mr. Mitchell would have us believe that the 14th Amendment created a whole new class of citizens, federal citizens of the District of Columbia and its territories, specifically for purposes of taxation all the while ignoring the fact that it was the representatives of the States united at that time under the US Constitution that ratified the 14th Amendment that made sure that the former slaves of any of the several states of the Union would, from thence forward, have the same legal standing as the free men of the Union. It changed nothing in regards to A1, S8, C4 “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, … “.
Also, Mr. Mitchell would have us believe that the term ‘United States’ as it appears in A1, S8, C4 of the US Constitution refers ONLY to the District of Columbia and the territories that the Federal Government has immediate “authority” over. This is an uneducated interpretation as the Congressional records of the Constitutional convention tell us that the term ‘United States’ as it appears in the US Constitution has several meanings and therefore it is the context of any given article or subsection of that article that dictates the proper meaning of the term used therein.
Therefore, it was not the authors of the 14th Amendment that changed the meaning of the term ‘United States’ as it pertains to citizenship, it is Mr. Mitchell’s ignorance of the rules of interpretation of law that enables the ignorant public at large to remain further ignorant and even more susceptible to their wrongful application of the law that leads them down the path of self inflicted harm because of their ignorance of the law, or their reliance on a person with big letters behind their names as if those big letters are a guarantee that that person actually has studied the actual statutes so to know the law such as Mr. Mitchell who admits to NOT reading the laws. From the very onset of his book, The Federal Zone, Mitchell admits that he has not gone to the actual statutes, but simply relied on treatises written by men or women of the same Constitutional ignorance as Mitchell because of course, they are supposed experts.
Well, let’s test Mr. Mitchell’s expertise.
In the book, The Federal Zone, Mitchell begins by touching upon the Supreme court case, Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. Mr. Mitchell’s contention is that it was not the fact that Brushaber was an investor that held stock in a federally held corporation located in the territory of Utah (Utah had not yet become a state of the union) that was the determining factor of the case. Mitchell would have us believe that it was Brushabers’ claim that he was a citizen of the State of New York and resident of the borough of Brooklyn, NY that gave rise to the reason that Brushaber lost the case. Mitchell would have us believe that by claiming to be a ‘citizen’, regardless of the place of residency, Brushaber was claiming to be a citizen of the federally owned District of Columbia because, according to Mitchell, 14th Amendment citizens are aliens of the ‘States of the Union’ and therefore, it was Brushaber’s use of the term ‘citizen’ in reference to himself that made him subject to taxation rather than his financial activity with the federal government that Brushaber engaged in that caused Brushaber to become subject to taxation under the 16th Amendment. This is legal chicanery at its worst and the cause of many fined and jailed citizens who follow such nonsense.
The whole premise of Mitchell’s website, as far as I can determine, is to create a following so to have the constitutionally legal 16th Amendment repealed and the constitutionally created IRS abolished. It is also Mitchell’s contention that Congress never passed any legislation creating the Department of Internal Revenue. As I stated above, Mitchell admits to not having actually read the statutes at large, therefore, how would he know that the statute of July 1, 1862 titled “An Act to provide Internal Revenue to support the Government and to pay Interest on the Public Debt” began by stating:
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That for the purpose of super-intending the collection of internal duties, stamp duties, licenses, or taxes imposed by this act, or which may be hereafter imposed, and of assessing the same, and office is hereby created in the Treasury Department to be called the office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with an annual salary of four thousand dollars, who shall be charged, and is hereby charged, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, with preparing all the instructions, regulations, directions, forms, blanks, stamps, and licenses, and distributing the same, …”
Now to recap, Mitchell believes that the Department of Internal Revenue and its taxing authority was subsequent to the passing of the 14th Amendment when in fact, the statute that became the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was created by Congress four years after the establishment of the Department of Internal Revenue and a full four years after the Internal Revenue began collecting the constitutional taxes authorized by the US Constitution. What Mitchell has done is to erroneously put the cart before the horse because Mr. Mitchell was too lazy to do his own research, wholly relying on the constitutional ignorance of others like himself, thereby, not being of the educated mind of our founding fathers, many of whom never stepped one foot in a law school, Mr. Mitchell has ignored the fact that in order for the creation to do what the creators created it do, it would need a revenue system that would give it the means by which to do that which it was created to do.
And then there is Mitchell’s utter lack of understanding of exactly what an excise (duty) tax is, a tax on activity regardless of the person’s citizenship status.
Suffice to say, I can now, without a shadow of a doubt, conclude this review of supremelaw.org and its owner Paul Andrew Mitchell, by rendering my official opinion as an educated citizen of the United States of America and resident of one of the 50 States of that Union, that Mr. Paul Andrew Mitchell, regardless of the big letters he displays after his name from the empty degrees he holds, Mr. Paul Andrew Mitchell is NOT an expert on the US Constitution or the 14th & 16th Amendments to said Constitution and that no one should, for the purposes of educating themselves, entertain anything that is published at Mitchell’s website as a source of constitutional truth.
For those who are truly interested in becoming the type of educated citizen that the founding fathers as well as the drafters of the 14th & 16th Amendments were, begin by reading, The Fascinating Truth About The 16th Amendment followed by Bob’s Bicycles. This will give you the proper factual foundation that every truly educated citizen builds their constitutional education upon so to be able to apply the law as Congress, at the time of the adoption of the law, intended them to apply it.
Shalom
Pro 28:4 Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them. 5 Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it completely
Constitutionally Speaking 