.Lost Amendment to Constitution Discovered!

By F. JJ. Kiel

TEPID NEWS AGENCY: Washington D.C. -- In a discovery as stunning as finding the first evidence that Vikings discovered the New World before Columbus, the Smithstonium Museum announced today that the Constitutional Convention had passed 11 amendments, not the original ten that form the basis of the Bill of Rights.

The "Lost" 11th Amdendent, interestingy enough, would have made many of former President Bill Clinton's initiatives easier to push through, or at least they would have allowed his minions to lie with a straight face as they stuck it to the American taxpayer.

(This new amendment was "discovered" when we were all white hot to get rid of Clinton -- but in the first year of his presidency, well before Monicagate was discovered. I was more upset with the American people, I suppose. Clinton so flagrantly broke his promise to cut taxes, even before he took office. I couldn't believe that Americans didn't rise up and chuck him out of office before he could even grab it. Well, I guess he knew Americans better than me.
He got elected twice, and I myself long ago acknowledged that I couldn't get enough votes for a deputy assistant dog catcher I found a faded document in a construction site just off Gallows Road in Tyson's Corner, a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. recently, in the shallow grave of a

In second line oc Constitution, under word "America," can be found the phrase referrng to the lost amendment, if held up to a mirror upside down and translating the apparent phrase to Serbo-Croatian 18th century code.

man apparently hanged 200 years ago, according to the execution order parchment, for "ye olde flagrante lying, after promising never to do so."

The parchment was barely legible, but I did call in the scholars who have been working on the Dead Sea Scrolls to assist me in re-constructing it. Lo and behold, it turned out to a long-lost article to the U.S. Constitution.

It was apparently originally attached to the first draft of the Constitution that was written in Philadelphia. The sole copy was given to the man who met his unfortunate end on Gallows Road, as he was en route to the Virginia House of Burgesses in the old capital of Williamsburg. Virginia would have been the first state legislature to consider the first draft.

After this draft was lost, the writers of the Constitution apparently reconsidered and sent out the second version of the new document on its way to the states for final ratification, without including the article.

"Well, once we got the sad news that the original draft was lost, we took it as a sign from the Almighty that the controversial Article should be excised, because it would never, never, never apply to any possible candidate for the presidency.

The long-lost article is published below for the first time

Article VI-VI-VI.

Section 1 -- Institution of a tax after promising to cut taxes.

We the people of the United States, in order to protect ourselves from the possibility of being fooled sometime in the future, say 200 years or so in the future, by a smooth talking, honey-toned candidate for the presidency, hereby adopt the following Article:

Section 2 -- The unfortunate need for ye old doughe

It is obvious that the United States of America under this new document will need funds to operate the Government, though we trust that such "investment in the future" will never reach higher than two percent of a person's income, whether paid in the form of tariffs or excise taxes . . . We seriously doubt whether said Americans will ever be stupid enough to allow the Government to place a direct tax on their income, especially in the form of subtracting said tax before the citizen ever collects wages for the sweat of his brow.

Section 3 -- New Impeachment Offense

If ever a person under consideration for the office of President shall publicly proclaim that he would lower taxes upon the citizenry, and once he office try to raise taxes within his first six months, then this offense shall be grounds for immediate removal from office.

We doubt that any such person could ever be nurtured in this fair land, but feel that this amendment should be instituted, just in case. We the undersigned, despite our bitterness that we will never be invited to sell our signatures at "autograph shows," and despite the fact that we can barely two cents a day in meal money and none for travel money, have therefore decided to institute this said article.

Section 4 -- Ways of removal other than impeachment under the six-month option.

The office of President shall be the most important office under the new Constitution. Presidents, of course, shall make mistakes, and we will just have to live with them as best we can, but we the undersigned proclaim the "Sorry, Never Mind" rule if such offense as described in Section 2 occurs within the first six months of said President taking office.

Under this rule, the person elected as Vice President is removed from consideration to succeed the President, if the latter is removed from office within six months of assuming it under the "Sorry, Never Mind" rule.

Electors who voted for the President, who is then slated for removal for violating this Article, can gather within six months of his taking office and proclaim a new President from among those who had been under consideration, except if that person hails from the Spanish colony of Tejas, sometimes spelled Texas, that is now part of New Spain, sometimes called Mejico, or Mexico, and has a first name that rhymes with "Toss," as in, "Toss out of office."

Section 5 -- Makes no difference

This article shall apply even if said President expresses remorse for raising taxes, declaring "They (Congress) made me do it. I feel your pain, I really do."

Section 6 -- Earning power

If a said President is removed from his Office under this Article for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, said President will lose the legal right to sell his memoirs for more than the unimaginable sum of $6,000. We are setting it so high in order to give such a disgraced person the right to feed his family (Women will not ever be given the vote of course, but we would then phrase this as "his or her family").