I am an Ohio native, born and raised here, and I currently reside in Ohio. Like almost all of my neighbors, I believed that Ohio was admitted to the United States as the 17th State in 1803.
But I was wrong.
As this essay reveals, due to a Congressional screw up Ohio wasn't actually admitted (retroactively) to the Union until 1953:
But is that actually the case?
The US Constitution gives Congress the authority to admit new states to the Union:
Article 4, Section 3
1. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; ...
But it does NOT give Congress the authority to pass RETROACTIVE legislation:
Article 1, Section 9
3. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Here we have the makings of a REAL constitutional crisis. Consider the following questions (and there may be more):
- Does the "retroactive" aspect of the 1953 legislation negate the entire act? If it does, Ohio is not a US State.
- If any of those eight Presidents were not truly eligible to hold the office, what is the status of laws and executive actions they authorized? (Same applies to votes of the possibly ineligible Representatives and Senators and rulings of Justices.)
- Were any OTHER "States" also improperly "admitted" to the Union?
- What if Ohio and any other applicable "State" now decides it does not WANT to join the Union? Can they be compelled to do so?
- Considering the current mess our three branches of government have put us in lately and (I hate to say it) the quality of the people now running them, how do you think they would deal with such a mess?
And should you think all this is no big deal, please ask yourself why so many people want to use a provision of our Constitution to disqualify President Trump from running again but choose to ignore other provisions they consider to be invalid, inconsequential, or inconvenient.
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