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entries for 2002/8/28
political science fiction
Climbed Stone Mountain again this morning. Well, today anyway -- I'm off my sleep schedule again. There was a family of black goats up there at the top. A mom a dad and... um... a kid. The kid did that thing goats do where they jump around and toss their heads back. Weird.
Anyway, coming down the mountain, I somehow started thinking about Texas, and how it has the right to split into five states. It seemed to me that since Texas is a largely republican state, then it would be in the interest of the Republican party to make the split, because it is likely that there would be an extra 8 Republican senators.
But, looking at the facts, while both texas senators are republican, only
thirteen of the 30 representatives in the House are republican. Which makes me think that maybe Texas isn't as strongly republican as I thought.
Also, I'd have to question whether this right is constitutional, given Article IV, section 3.
Still, I think stuff like this is very interesting. There are plenty of these little political seeds lying around that just haven't gone anywhere, but could. For example, Article V says that if the state legislatures in three fourths of the states agree, they can make a constitutional ammendment without consulting Congress.
I don't believe that's ever been done. But what if? Suppose some organization managed to influence a majority of the legislatures in 38 states? There's a whole lot of people there, but they're also a lot lower profile than the US Congress.
Then there's the free state project, which is trying to get 20,000 libertarians and similar-thinking people to move to a single state, with the intent
of allowing those people to make a change in the state's government.
I just think this is cool. I don't think I'd be much of a politician, but maybe I could become a bestselling political-science-fiction writer. :)
Anyway...