On Saturday, Hays drove to Austin to join more than 600 fellow Texans at a grass-roots State's Rights Rally on the Capitol grounds that roused more than two hours of cheering as speaker after speaker charged up a take-back-our-country agenda.

"We stand on the cusp of a new era," said George Scaggs, director of NewRevolutionNow, a group demanding that the Legislature pass a so-called nullification resolution to block the federal government from enacting President Barack Obama's health care initiative and other unfunded – and what they say are unconstitutional – federal mandates.

"This is a fledgling revolution, that's what it is."