But before that petition story had been flogged into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp by local and national media, there was another petition, circulated fruitlessly since February or so by Daniel Miller and the Texas Nationalist Movement, the organization of which he is president. We wrote about that just after the election last week. (The comments section from that article is still filling up with thoughtful nuggets about "this Islamists/Marxists [sic] president of ours.") And you'll never guess who popped up on Sean Hannity's TV show last night, chatting it up about secession while being given credit for starting the petition to the White House.
The clip comes to us courtesy of Mediaite, and begins with Hannity asking Miller, "You needed 25,000 to take it to the White House, you got 80,000. How long have you been trying to get people to sign this petition?" (Thereby demonstrating, among other things, the level of research Sean Hannity conducts to prepare for his show.)
"Well," replied Miller, smoothly side-stepping the fact that "Micah H.," a freshman from the University of Texas at Arlington, is actually responsible for all those signatures, "This petition is relatively new. But our organization has had a petition drive through the last two sessions of the Texas Legislature for this particular purpose." And every session, he added, TNM accumulates "thousands of signatures" from Texans "that just want to be able to have this issue come to a vote."
Miller called it a "cruel irony" that people like him and Sean Hannity, "who are really committed to the principles of liberty and freedom as envisioned by our founders" should have to stay yoked to a Union "that has fundamentally changed." Texas is treated like a "cash cow" by the feds, he added, who have "no regard for the sovereignty of the states."
Miller also added that "the petition that's going to the White House will accomplish virtually nothing." But, he said, "It will send a very clear message that the people of Texas want their independence."
Ultimately, he said, "any type of process where any state would choose to leave the Union must come down a vote of the people." If the issue were put to a non-binding referendum vote here, he added, the polling the TNM has done "shows that we would carry a majority of Texas."
The evidence for that seems a little dubious, let's say, given that less than 1 percent of the state has signed the largest secession petition. But Hannity sure seems invigorated by the idea. Fox News and the Texas Nationalists have both had a hard week. Why not give them this moment of weird, irrational sunshine?
