Prima facie evidence, it seems to me, that the Obama Regime takes the slightest hint of any States even contemplating escaping his iron-fisted grip deadly seriously:
It seemed like a typical congressional meeting for the "Republic of Texas". "Senators" and the "president" gathered in the center of a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall, surrounded by public onlookers, to debate issues of the "national" currency, develop "international" relations and celebrate the birthday of one of their oldest members.
But this wasn't 1836, and this would be no ordinary legislative conference. Minutes into the meeting a man among the onlookers stood and moved to open the hall door, letting in an armed and armored force of the Bryan Police Department, the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office, Agents of the Texas District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI.
In the end, at least twenty officers corralled, searched and fingerprinted all sixty meeting attendees, before seizing all cellphones and recording equipment in a Valentine’s Day 2015 raid on the Texas separatist group.
“We had no idea what was going on,” said John Jarnecke, president of the "Republic of Texas". “We knew of nothing that would warrant such an action.”
A group of cranks playing make-believe and dress-up? Perhaps. Will Texas ever attempt to secede from the Union for real? Beats me. Is the "Republic of Texas" a dangerous, violent group that would warrant a mass, multi-level law enforcement raid, guns all but a-blazing? Hell, no.
What was the "provocation"? A “legal summons” to a local judge "ordering" him to appear before the group for charges of "crimes". Was that a smart stunt to pull? Probably not. Should the local judge have just laughed it off (assuming it didn't include actual physical threats)? You betcha. Could the local judge have done the "ROT" more PR damage by mentioning their "summons" publicly and ridiculing them without mercy? Certainly. Did he overreact by getting the entire police apparatus - local, county, State, and federal - involved to treat these harmless cranks like they were an ISIS cell? Unquestionably. And now they are going to get a ton of sympathetic publicity for their troubles, and for the litigation that is probably gestating even now in the "ROT's" upper echelons.
"Smoking gun" quote from the raiders:
“You can’t just let people go around filing false documents to judges trying to make them appear in front of courts that aren’t even real courts,” said Kerr County sheriff Rusty Hierholzer, who led the operation.
Actually, Rusty, yes, you can. In fact, legally speaking, you have no other choice. What you can't do is burst in on a peaceably assembled group of citizens, gathered for a perfectly legal purpose, like some amalgam of the Gestapo, the KGB, and the Stasi, and treat them like domestic terrorists.
Or at least, you're not supposed to be able to. But I guess that that, too, has changed in the Age Of The One. And yet, none of your small army of cops made any actual arrests, did it? Which suggests precisely what this raid was: a message from the ruling authorities. "Stop meeting and disband your seditious organization at once - or else."
I wouldn't recommend that the "ROT" send out any more "legal summons" like they were reenacting the Nuremberg trials, but it would be interesting to see what happens if they continue to hold public gatherings and focus more on legally advocating secession instead of pretending that their State already had, just to see how much more the ruling authorities might overreact to unwittingly prove their point.
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