I thought earlier that Tom DeLay had conceded that in fact Texas isn’t allowed to secede from the federal union. And he does say that at one point in his talk with Chris Matthews that Texas can’t secede. But then he has a reading of the 1845 annexation of Texas in which he claims that Texas can essentially force Congress to kick them out of the Union, thus amounting to a sort grand secessionist bank-shot.
Here’s the quote …
Texas as a Republic joined the Union by treaty. There’s a process in the Treaty by which Texas could divide into five states. If we invoke that, the gov … the United States Senate would kick us out and nullify the Treaty. They’re not going to allow ten new Texas senators into the Senate. That’s how you secede …
A few seconds later DeLay seemed to say Texas couldn’t secede but then went back to the Treaty double-bank shot idea. I guess you could say he’s conflicted.
You can see the video here.
So did GE and NBC brass lean on the folks at CNBC to lay off Obama? Our source says no.
We review recent events from the Palin alternative universe.
There’s been lots of talk about the relationship between AIG and Goldman Sachs and the fact that Goldman ended up getting almost $13 billion of the money the federal government ‘loaned’
AIG to stave off its well-earned collapse. And we’ve long known that prior to signing on as CEO to manage the wind down of AIG, Edward Liddy served on Goldman’s board. What we didn’t know until now is that Liddy still owns roughly $3 million in Goldman stock.
I never like to jump to conclusions about whether people took specific actions because of their own narrow economic self-interest. And I think there’s much more involved here — whatever happened — than Liddy’s own personal asset management. But this is pretty elementary in terms of a conflict of interest. Liddy was managing the government’s money. And it turns out he had a huge financial stake in the continuing health of Goldman Sachs.
AIG spokesperson Christina Pretto rather unconvincingly suggests to the Times that the decision over whether to write the $12 billion check to Goldman would not have risen to the level of a decision that would need the CEO’s sign off. I bet. A somewhat stronger argument, if in a rather Pyrrhic kind of way, is her suggestion that $3 million is such “a small percentage of [Liddy’s] total net worth” that it’s unlikely it could have biased his dealings with Goldman.
I saw this only out of the corner of my eye today. And not reading the details, I missed the significance. But this, I suspect, will turn out to be a big deal. Speaker Pelosi on Wednesday called for a new commission modeled on the 30s-era Pecora Commission.
The latest out of NY-20 …
20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy.
It’s late. And Kleefeld’s our resident expert on this one. So I’m going to leave open the possibility that this is just a non-controversial procedural move that sounds more ridiculous than it really is. Or, maybe he’s just decided to go all out and ask the judge to declare him the winner even though he got fewer votes.
Thanks to TPM Reader BP for flagging this one for us.
Conservatives are so incensed by warnings about the threat of right wing radicalism that they’re considering overthrowing the federal government.