In her continuing crusade to destroy the United States, birther queen and occasional attorney Dr. Orly Taitz published an article on her web site [link to article on Taitz web site], urging Arizona to sever ties with the United States. Taitz wrote:
Just calling the referendum in one state, like the state of AZ, would send chills down the spines of the scoundrels in the federal government. They will know, that one state seceding from the union, will create an avalanche of seceding states. Those states might form one new union or several unions, but one important thing, is that the scoundrels in Washington will be out of work. We have seen such corrupt unions dismantling. Soviet Union came apart, so did Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. People and individual states can chose to dismantle a union and build a new union, if the government in the old union became too bloated and corrupt. I do not know, if we will need to go as far as dismantling the union, but just calling a referendum would be a good start to send a message.
Taitz embraces the concept of nullification, that any state can ignore federal laws it doesn’t like. This is one of the issues that precipitated the US Civil War and the deaths of half a million individuals. She wrote: “… if Jan Brewer had any back bone, she would make an announcement, that the citizens of the state of Arizona should stop paying federal taxes….” She describes the United States Constitution as a contract between the States and the Federal Government that the States can abrogate should they feel that the Federal Government is not living up to its end of the bargain.
Taitz, an émigré from the old Soviet Union, has not been able to embrace certain core American principles such as the rule of law. She sees her own delusional world view as what the law ought to be and anything that she disagrees with as public corruption. Taitz says, “We know, that the elections are totally rigged” when, in fact, the United States has one of the most legally compliant election processes in the world.
As I have said before, the birther don’t just want a “do over” of the 2008 election; they want a “do over” of the Civil War.
What’s really amazing is her followers (like john) cheer on her every OMG moment which ultimate fails. At what point do they look at her failures and say “WTF, why support an idiot”. Her followers must be zen budhists, they enjoy the pain of failure. She is demanding to see Obama’s original BC, as that will only confirm what has already been released, what’s up with that?
As a Diablo with negro descendants, I would have to object to a “do over” back to Civil War days. It was not a fun time.
I do not think Jan Brewer is that insane to suggest secession. There is some common sense in her….some.
Just as I was thinking how typically loony this screed was ….. it occerred to me we might not miss Arizona. The Grand Canyon is nice, and spring training in a foreign country might be a little weird, but it could be a net positive on the finances of Medicare and Social Security. Seriously, it’s pretty hard to see AZ as an independent state. It’s already broke! On its own, it’s a decade from becoming a Mad Maxian wasteland. So much for the southern overland route to Californey!
She’s addicted to ridicule. Her business model is based on ridicule. She promotes the ridicule of her on her website. Without ridicule she is nothing. Her problem is that everyday she has to up the ante.
She’s so weirdly naive sounding. She talks about getting her silly, eligibility-focused candidates on the ballot in all fifty states but even mainstream GOP candidates with millions of dollars behind them can’t do that. Can you imagine what ballots would look like if every Orly-type kook was just allowed to put their name on the ballot?
She says, “I do not know, if we will need to go as far as dismantling the union . . .”
Who the hell does she think she is? She has, at most, ten real followers.
Now c’mon…. let’s be fair…. ten followers? She has at least double that….. 😉
You use that word “erstwhile” a lot. I really should crack open a dictionary and find out what it means, though from context I’m guessing it means “counterfeit” or “something that pretends to be something it is not”.
Taitz is forgetting one or maybe two important things.
1) The last time states tried this, there was a Civil War.
2) The federal government is MUCH better armed than any of the states.
Actually, it is I who should crack out the dictionary. I thought it meant “sometimes” but it actually means “former.” I used it correctly for Leo Donofrio who was a lawyer but stopped practicing, and I guess it bled over to Taitz.
More importantly, the Civil War settled the issue conclusively. States do NOT have the right to secede – Period.
Prior to the Civil War, the argument of a state’s right to nullification or secession were a valid question. That no longer holds true.
Not that any of us are surprised by this trend towards calling for a 2nd Civil War…as we’ve seen these drums slowly seeping through beneath the surface of the Birther movement and the Tea Party movement for some time…
However, there becomes a point where open advocation calling for such should not be tolerated. It crosses the line on a settled issue, seeped in the terrible loss of blood of too many Americans in order to resolve it.
Let’s call it what it is – open calls for Secession or Nullification are clear SEDITION, as they are trying to incite an insurrection. This type of speech is correctly NOT protected by the 1st Amendment and is clearly defined as a High Crime. It deserves very, very little tolerance at all.
Orly is playing a dangerous game here and is crossing the line to where she deserves to be charged and tried for SEDITION. She truly is a traitor to this country, from within.
I have also seen birthers fantasize about the reinstatement or reaffirmation of the Dred Scott decision (or something similar) asserting that people of African descent should not be protected by the Constitution and should never be U.S. citizens. The implication is occasionally broadened to include all non-whites and non-Christians.
But they’re not racists. No, of course not.
i come from vermont, voted most likely to secede. but it won’t happen. quebec almost made it.
MW — that statement bears sourcing! Could be very useful. Have the reference(s) handy?
Here is a wikipedia link you might enjoy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_political_entities_in_North_America
Personally, I’ve always gotten a kick out of the historical entity known as the State of Franklin and the story of Republic of Winston. I recommend the section on the Vermont Republic to you…but there are quite a few interesting entities that formed for a time during the process of settling this nation.
I will have to go back and look. I usually keep sources or cite sources but I’ll admit this one is just a recollection. It may have been FR or the forum in the old Dave Weigel column in the Washington Independent.
Ive seen this meme propounded regularly over at Freeperville as well as in comments at Citizen Wells.
Just searching secede at Freep throws up a shed load of links
https://www.google.com/search?q=secede+site%3Afreerepublic.com&hl=en&biw=1600&bih=782&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images
I’m sure Arizonans are on board with secession over such an important issue.
No, that would be ‘ersatz’.
As in the ancient comic book advertisement for “Genuine Ersatz Spanish Fly”.
There is a movement in Southern Arizona to split from Northern Arizona and apply to become the 51st state.
I think the main sticking point is what to name the fledgling state, South Arizona is just too prosaic I guess.
“Gadsden” maybe? I like “Alta Sonora” myself.
The argument I have read was that since Obama’s father was from Kenya, and not born in the USA, and only transient, Obama cannot claim the protection of the 14th amendment, so Dredd Scott still applies to him. The argument ignores his mother, of course, and apart from being a (bad) joke is also profoundly racist. The transient argument (used to deny jurisdiction) has been repudiated by eg Plyler vs Doe, where Texas argued that it could deny education to the children of illegal immigrants since they were not under the jurisdiction of Texas (a nice word play, by the way – Texas was NOT arguing that illegals are not under the jurisdiction of the USA).
You’ll have to tread carefully there. I had to check my old syllabus, but I found an interesting “precedent”. In Carter v. Carter Coal Co.(1936, the New Dea era) the Suprme Court to the utter surprise of many legal scholars who had thought these verdicts had been superseded, cited abundantly from Kidd v. Pearson and United States v. E. C. Knight Co..
Of course, neither of these old cases had been followed by not one but three constitutional amendments, and neither had started its argument from a historic fallacy (“Negroes have never been considered citizens of the United States”, absolutely incorrect as Doc pointed out) – though Fuller’s (yes, him again, the famous dissent in Wong Kim Ark).argument that a monopoly in manufactuting only indirectly and accidentally leads to a monopoly in commerce, today looks a bit Orlyesque.
It could be argued that any lawyer who would still dare to mention Dredd Scott today would immediately be given a badge saying “carnivak n
a badge saying “carnival barker”
I would think Apuzzo would relish the honor.
New Arizona
Agreed. He sure likes to reference Dred Scott an awful lot as support for his crank arguments…
It would certainly be strange to have to use my passport to go home to where I grew up. Maybe the relatively sane communities of Tucson and Flagstaff could remain American territory, much the way West Berlin was an island surrounded by East Germany.
You could probably find something if you look for statements by Bob Pinkstaff.
A real piece of work. Semper fried.
He certainly is taken by the label of “muslim communist”.
Speaking of Arizona, things are heating up for Sheriff Joe:
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20111223/3b362031-5144-497d-a893-6e82bd5f9aa3
As someone in Arizona, I can tell you that I am NOT okay with this.
The name is supposed to be Baja Arizona, but I haven’t seen much on this issue recently. I’m in Phoenix, and we hear nothing at all about it. I think the movement is dead.
Here’s an article from February’s Arizona Republic: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/02/27/20110227baja-arizona-montini.html
I want to point out that a single state dividing into smaller states is a completely different entity that a state trying to secede from the Union.
Seceding from the Union is not a legal option and is outright sedition. The Civil War definitively settled that question.
However, many state constitutions allow the possible future provisioning of their single state into more than one separate states. These entities, if ever pursued and approved, would just become an additional state in the Union. (i.e. add another star to our flag).
Recently, there has been similar talk in Illinois, where the rural areas are grumbling that they want the greater Chicago area to be split off from them.
Similarly, when Texas was admitted into the union, it esconsed a provision reserving the right to break into as many as 4 smaller entities in the future.
These types of intra-state split desires seem to bubble up from time to time and are not that uncommon. In modern times, none of the existing state entities have ever done anything beyond a very small scale entertainment of talking about these notions.
When it comes down to it, the primary motivations seem to be that one region of a state feels it has little in common with the rest of the state and therefore either wants to split off or “boot” that other area. Lately, this often comes down to a feeling that a key urban population center has too much political “control” and say and is different than the rural community around it.
While these feelings and differences are understandable and actually fairly common, I seriously doubt that any of these movements will take serious steps to move forward and is pretty much just expressions of a combination of frustrations and solidarity.
When it comes down to it, the large metropolitan areas of a state do have more pull and sway for a reason – they do often comprise the bulk of both the state’s concentrated population but also the bulk of its commerce and income. The rural areas cover a greater swath of land, but are by the very nature of being rural, sparsly populated and not havens for job creation. By the very nature of how populations are built and grow, if a particular area was or became an engine of economic growth, it too would become a city.
At the end of the day, much of the state’s revenue and tax base obviously comes from where the density of business and population exists. Therefore, in many of these cases, it would simply be unwise for the rural area to split away from the population center, as those other areas depend upon the tax revenue and subsidies generated from that population center for their own stability and growth. To remove the main metropolitan region from a state would only be creating a new impoverished and sparsely populated state entity and a small but wealthy and dense state entity in its wake.
Right G. The only people talking about seceding are Orly Taitz and Rick Perry. 😛
Works for me. I have extreme doubts that Maricopa County and Mesa in particular are American anyway.
Why would Phoenix discuss Tucson politics? They’ve been too engrossed with the ASU football coach
train wrecksearch.Every party needs a pooper that’s why we invited you, party pooper. Party Pooper.
Yeah, I’ve heard that TOO!
True, true. However, for some people “definitely” appears a bit less definite than for some others. (sigh)
so CW II would be illegal ?
Of course it would. Although those who darkly fantasize about it happening again would likely be disappointed by what form such insurrection would take today.
Stopping secession to enforce the Union this time around would likely be a strongly coordinated law enforcement action to put down insurrection and not become an actual full blown war.
Simply put, news travels too fast these days…as do our forces. There wouldn’t be time for Seditionists to mount a coordinated and sustainable breakaway without being quickly being caught and put down, shortly after the idea was made “serious” enough for anyone to pay attention to it.
Every state has a ton of Federal offices and a fairly mixed population. Anyone pushing for such an attempt would have to spend a lot of time trying to convince their own agencies and public to go along with the plan. They would face stiff opposition right off the bat and various areas of their state that wouldn’t side with them under any circumstances. The proper federal law enforcment officials would be able to move in to confront the seditionists within a matter of hours, no matter where they were located.
Such Civil War fantasies would simply be stopped in their tracks long before it could become an actual “war” and those responsible would face their crimes in a court of law.
It isn’t going to happen, of course, but if Arizona did try to secede, the Federal government would bring the rebellion to its knees simply by cutting off the flow of water from the Colorado River.
LOL! You’ve hit home on a very important point of how much our modern society is dependent on various vital infrastructure components (water, heat, electricity, internet, etc…) The federal government would definitely have the most power in being able to control and shut off such resources from malcontents.
Federal enforcement officials would also have an overwhelming advantage on training, manpower and equipment. Any insurrection would be so out of its league right off the bat that the conclusion isn’t even in doubt.
“Best case” scenerio for any insurrectionists would be achieving one or several defiant “hold out” incidents on the scale of Ruby Ridge or Waco…and that’s the best they could hope to do. Hate to burst their bubble, but those events didn’t end well for those hold outs…and the rest of the US hummed right along, without any impact from their actions other than news coverage. Most people would go about their lives as if nothing was happening at all. The only thing the insurrectionists would accomplish is winding up dead or incarcerated for life.
That’s a bit problematic. Glen Canyon Dam is in Arizona and I don’t think there are any major dams upstream of it that could hold enough water to keep it turned off long enough.
The Feds could turn off Hoover if they could get control of the Arizona side, I suppose, and with Lake Mead at a low water point, it could buffer a lot of water. However if they did that, they would be turning off the taps to California too.
Tucson gets its water from underground and can hold out indefinitely. Depending on who you listen to, there is enough ‘natural’ water in the basin to support 2 million people for 15 years or 150 years. The Colorado River water is pumped underground to recharge the water table, if they stopped recharging, Tucson would carry on.
Phoenix would probably die quickly without the Colorado water, there is not near enough water in the Gila river to support that… place. Please go ahead and turn off the tap and kill two birds with one stone (Phoenix and LA 😎 ).
No, wait. Then Southern Arizona would be really Californicated from both directions.
In the immortal words attributed to Fagan: “I think I’d better think that out again”.
Arizona and Texas secessionists don’t seem to ever think of an alliance with Mexico as a necessity.
Now that would be ironic!
It is odd that Orly does not know, and also strange that others on this site have not pointed out, that virtually all of us, all 300 million, have taken an oath that specifically says that the United States cannot be broken up. The oath begins “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” and it contains the words “one nation indivisible.”
For Orly not to know that fact reflects her background. Other nations can be broken up. The United States cannot, not so much because of the law (maybe, but I’m really not sure), but very much because of the oath. Yes, a pledge is an oath..
Actually, that point has been repeatedly made here, in reference to the Civil War definitevely settling the issue of the concept of state secession.
Before that event came to a head, there were some legitimate debates in terms of the full extent to the contractual role and obligations of individual states within the nation and whether an agreement to join the Union was reversable or permanent. That conflct conclusively proved the latter.
I greatly appreciate your excellent additional reminder that our very Pledge of Allegiance specifically drives this point further home.
Since Orly is now a naturalized citizen, perhaps she should be reminded of the oath she herself swore to become a US citizen (copied from the government’s USCIS website):
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Seems to me she is legally obligated to support efforts to put down the (hypothetical) Arizona rebellion. Would she risk loss of citizenship for swearing falsely should she resist?
Good point. Of course, the only part of the Pledge of Allegiance which right-wingers care about is “under God.”
Of course, the Pledge of Allegiance was composed by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy in 1892.
However, the foaming fright wingers and birther bigots might prefer the pledge this way:
I pledge allegiance to the flag without gold braids of the United States of America, and to the non-democratic and non-socialist Republican Party for which it stands, one nation under my God only, indivisible unless it’s a blue state or a red state threatened by a Democratic Party dictatorship, with liberty and justice for all white, Christian Protestants born to male and female, white Christian Protestant parents who are citizens.
Oh you mean the “new and improved” version of the pledge where the Religious Right inserted “under God” after the fact?
The “Under God” part wasn’t in the original 1892 original pledge. It was inserted in 1954 during a period of intense religious paranoia in the US
And a related topic:
Non-Sequiter by Wiley
Yeah, pretty much.
It bears repeating that this is also a phrase that was merely tacked on later (during the era of “anti-commie fears”) and not even part of the original pledge.
That makes their emphasis to only care about that meaningless add-on even more telling. So really, what they care about has nothing to do with the original intent of our Pledge whatsoever at all!