History Lesson

In case you were wondering, Judge Smails writes in:

(1) Talk of secession in Texas has always been stronger than in any other state (save perhaps South Carolina during the first 70 years of the union) for three reasons: first, Texas was once an independent nation; second, Texas did actually secede with the south; third, there's a mistaken belief that the annexation treaty of 1845 provided for legal Texas secession. That's simply not true. (2) What the 1845 treaty did say is that Texas could subdivide into up to five states, given it's enormous size relative to the other existing states at the time. (It wasn't made clear in the treaty whether Texas would need Congressional approval for the admittance of those new states, nor is it clear whether a plan that didn't require congressional approval for those states would have been constitutional.) Snopes has a nice layman's discussion of the subdivision/secession aspects of the Treaty here. (3) None of this matters, because the Radical Republicans made it pretty clear that the terms of readmission for Texas in 1870 nullified the provisions of the 1845 treaty. (4) Rick Perry is an idiot. (5) I've been heartened this week to see that conservative street protests are at least as incoherent and retarded as the ubiquitous leftist protests. I will contend till my death that the only rational reason to go to a protest rally is to meet chicks.