In Small Town, the Fight Continues for Texas Sovereignty

[rainbow4321]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/national/13overton.html?pagewanted=2


The building is the headquarters of the Republic of Texas, a sometimes militant organization whose members repudiate the authority of Austin and Washington and believe Texas should be a sovereign nation. The group gained notoriety eight years ago when some members took a couple hostage in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, and endured a weeklong siege by more than 100 police officers, after which a follower who fled into the mountains was killed. The leader of the faction involved in the standoff is still in prison.

But after several years of infighting and the expulsion of renegade splinter cells, the group has resurfaced here in Overton under a new leader, Daniel Miller. Mr. Miller, recently interviewed in Houston, said he wanted to distance the organization from its violent past and from its image as a white-supremacy movement. He said his new platform advocates Texas sovereignty without the use of guns or explosives

"I normally wouldn't be alarmed by a few boys getting into a fisticuffs thing," Chief Williams said. "But this is a group with a violent past in parts of Texas. However ludicrous their beliefs might sound to you and me, we can't forget that Jim Jones got a bunch of folks to drink Kool-Aid with him down in Guyana. You could shave one side of your head and have a loyal following around here by nightfall."

Mr. Miller acknowledged that the group was still almost entirely Anglo, although he said he was encouraging factions to look for a broader range of members. He also said he was discouraging activities like armed patrols of the Mexican border to limit immigration. And he said his administration, unlike some splinter cells, did not base its political philosophy on Old Testament beliefs, did not oppose women's suffrage and did not support a return to a legal system permitting slavery.

[AntiCoup2K4]

1. Why the hell didn't Texas secede in the 90's?

Then the Idiot would have been a citizen of a foreign country and not likely to steal a US election.

[Wright Patman]

2. I say this only half in jest

It is Abraham Lincoln's fault. He set the precedent as to what would follow any declaration of secession by any state or group of states from the Union.

IMHO, the world, on balance, would be a better place if there were four coutries in North America rather than three.

Certainly the Confederate States of America would not have the economic or military might to try to dominate the world.

Instead, it was "defeated" and reunited against its will into the U.S.A. and then slowly took it over via the ballot box during the ensuing century.