Five Lone Stars. Mess with Texas? Sure. Divide it into five states.

OpinionJournal.com ^ | August 22, 2004 | Austin Powers

[John Jorsett]

What would you say if we told you we have a way to add as many as eight new Republican senators to Congress? We could also add eight right-leaning votes to the Electoral College. It's simple, it's fun, and it's perfectly constitutional: Texas should divide itself into five states.

Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution says that new states may be created out of existing ones, but only with the consent of "the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

These days, a partisan Congress would never agree to a Texas carve-up, since any resulting new states would surely be politically conservative. But Congress need not take any action at all today: It granted its consent to Texas's potential subdivision 159 years ago. This made sense, as those had been the terms that Texas, a sovereign nation at the time, had negotiated for entering the Union. One provision of the 1845 Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas, passed by Congress and signed into law by President John Tyler, reads as follows:

"New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution."

[middie]

I doubt if there a lawyer or judge anywhere, regardless of his or her political orientation, who would agree with the opinion that any action of Texas voters could carve up that state in contravention of the U.S. Constitution. Our organic law declares its supremacy. No law of any sort can be enforced when found to contravene the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. A mere resolution of Congress, whether unilateral or joint, does not even have the force of law and, even if it did, it would violate the Supremacy Clause and thus would be a nullity.
Middie

[jcb8199]

I'd still be a Texan, so who cares whether it's one state or 5... and we'd still be better than the rest of y'all..

:)