Now that it is a Republican going over the top, of course, it is outrageous and intolerable. Double standards much?

1) First, I would guess that article doesn’t mean that congress can make any rules it wants about properties and territories just because it thinks it needs to.

2)Even if it does, you’ve still got it wrong. Because then it would mean that unless congress passes a rule that you can’t secede, then you can. That’s very different from your claim that you can’t do it unless congress says you can.

“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

If Congress doesn’t say you have the right to secede, then you don’t have the right to secede. No 10th Amendment issue here.

The Supreme Court did address this in Texas V White and basically said that that the states didn’t have the right to unilaterally leave the Union. It did mention the possibility of a State being allowed to leave if it wanted to and the US wanted to let them as well. Given the fact this ruling was in 1869 I suspect that even that would be challenged in court.

It is easy to write this movement off as right wing cranks, but South Carolina started taking about seceding even when Andrew Jackson was President. I agree with kranky kritter that the states don’t really have the means to stand on their own, and I hope this is a short lived movement.

The bottom line to me is that if you are counting on your license to do something coming from its status as unenumerated, you’re on shaky ground.

The Constitution says nothing on secession, this is true. And the 10th Amendment says that all rights not explicitly delegated to the Federal government are reserved for the states. That means that the Federal government has no legal right to forcibly maintain the Union. Several states included provisions for secession when they ratified the Constitution.

Don’t change the topic to whether there is a “de facto” right of secession, because the original poster said “Texas never had an option to secede”, which is wrong.

We love to talk about rights, but the bottom line in secession is not whether you have the right, but whether you have both the desire to do it and the means to make it stick. No state really has the means if the Union decides it won’t be allowed.

Does anyone with more familiarity know the details of Texas joining the union? Isn’t it the case that when Warren said it “was an issue,” he could simply have meant that when Texas joined, some portion of the group negitiating the terms for joining tried to include some conditions that would have allowed them to bail.

If Texas divided into fifths, can’t we presume that this would work like a gerrymander, in which the dominant party cut the pie to maximize its own representation? IOW, adding 8 GOP senators would be a foregone conclusion.

If a broad group of voters turns out, though, Perry gets a very dedicated 40 percent of the vote, while the other 60 percent scratches its head and wonders how the guy was elected in the first place.

I lived in Texas for a long time -(Blanco…45 miles from Austin and I agree the Austin/San Antonio corridor is an awesome place. Dallas Ft.Worth is lame, Houston is pretty nice) – and despite talk like Perry’s there is a huge number of people that don’t think like that at all. It’s unfortunate but Texas is one of those states with a nearly 50/50 population when it comes to the two party system – but right wing nuts seem to proliferate in that state and they do what ever they can to silence any opposition.