15 States Including Texas Have Filed A Petition To Secede From The United States Sund

If your state secedes:
FEMA won't be there to help YOU pick up the pieces.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/fema-give-m...ictims-267707/

Texas Secession Petition Movement Fuels Plans To Secede

By: Rob Adams | 11/26/2012 03:44 PM ET

Follow: Lone Star, Secede, Texas, Texas Secession Fever, United States, White House
Texas is experiencing a change, providing fuel to its session fever movement, after collecting the needed 25,000 signatures to petition advocating for the Lone Star to secede from the United States.

http://cdn.newsoxy.com/2012/11/texas...3956849110.jpg It is the first such movement for the state since it joined the union in 1845. The basis is the disagreement with the federal government over its fiscal and security policies, including TSA searches at airports.

Many people look at this movement and wonder, with the difficulty of fiscally managing a nation and its diverse factions of peoples, why anybody would want to set up their own country?

However, the U.S.-Mexico border region, as important as it is economically, is often ignored by White House,, and Mexico City. At a more local level, the border region is often ignored by the powers that be in the state capitals of border states. The El Paso and Southern New Mexico region can be used as an example.

In 1850, El Pasoans opted to become part of Texas, rejecting its historical connection to New Mexico. Referred to as “El Paso del Norte,” the Pass to the North, in colonial times, this city was a major gateway to New Mexico on the Camino Real, the royal highway that stretched from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The pass to the north in this case was the pass to Santa Fe.

The U.S. and Mexico come together physically via the nearly 2,000-mile border between the nations. The region plays a natural role of industrial production and the logistics required to send products to target markets on either side of the border. The logistical superiority of two economic powerhouses being located next to each other, coupled with the economical labor force, make the border region an important place where companies can achieve the advantages necessary to compete in the global market.

The border’s popularity as an industrial and logistical base will continue in the future as industrial and supply chains tighten.

With the global economic crises continuing, wouldn’t it be in the best interest for the people of Texas to stay linked with the United States?

http://www.newsoxy.com/politics/sece...xas-98647.html

Texas secession petition response: White House deadline nears

texas secession
November 26, 2012
By: Devonia Smith

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texas secession
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As of Monday and at the time of this publishing, 117,355 Texans think it is time to "divvy up the china and draft a property settlement," ending what many Texans feel has been a tumultuous marriage between the Lone Star State and the United States of America. Any official response to petitions filed on the White House’s “We the People” website are to be within 30 days of initiation.

The deadline of December 9 is near.

In Texas, one Billy Bob Anonymous, drawled, "If all the liberals who want to change our country into Europe were ants, I'd grind 'em under the heel of my boot. They aren't, and I can't; so secession is one of the options open to stop the wimpy p---ants and their president from ever messing with Texas again."

View slideshow:Texas size reasons why Texans think Texas is awesome: Hint, it's not just that Texas girls are prettier even though there is that...
http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/def...892393eb8f.jpg Texas celebrates 165th year of Independence
Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images


http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/def...8782342516.jpg Video debt limit primer: Hysterically not-funny spoof about raising the debt limit. Anyone no matter who they voted for should be able to understand it.

Many Texans do feel the government under the Obama administration is guilty of "messing with Texas." 17 lawsuits currently pending against the federal government. The biggest legal battle mounted by Texas, on a variety of issues, including health care reform and environmental standards. Texas argues the 10th Amendment grants state governments more autonomy than many of the laws passed by the federal government allow.

Though only .46 percent of the population of Texas has added their John Henry to the White House citizen petition requesting peaceful secession, following the reelection of Barack Obama to a second term as president, emotionally, it may be more. According to the New York Times, Romney won Texas by about 1.3 million votes.

Currently, all 50 states have active secession petitions on the White House’s “We the People” website. Of that 50, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio have the required 25,000 signatures needed to prompt a possible official response to their petitions, within 30 days of initiation. Signatures have been very quietly added as media reports get louder and louder in their support or mockery of these citizen's notion of secession. A citizen petition should not be confused with an official state or Texas Ordinance of Secession.

From the FACs of a Houston site selling bumper stickers promoting Texas secession, in answer to the question, "Didn’t the outcome of the Civil War prove that secession is not an option for any state," the response was:

"No. It only proved that, when allowed to act outside his lawfully limited authority, a U.S. president is capable of unleashing horrendous violence against the lives, liberty, and property of those whom he pretends to serve. The Confederate States (including Texas) withdrew from the Union lawfully, civilly, and peacefully, after enduring several years of excessive and inequitable federal tariffs (taxes) heavily prejudiced against Southern commerce.

Refusing to recognize the Confederate secession, Lincoln called it a "rebellion" and a "threat" to "the government" (without ever explaining exactly how "the government" was "threatened" by a lawful, civil, and peaceful secession) and acted outside the lawfully defined scope of either the office of president or the U.S. government in general, to coerce the South back into subjugation to Northern control.

The South's rejoining the Union at the point of a bayonet in the late 1860s didn't prove secession is "not an option" or unlawful. It only affirmed that violent coercion can be used, even by governments (if unrestrained), to rob men of their very lives, liberty, and property."

The question most asked is whether Texas could survive as a republic, apart from but next to the United States. Many think that economically Texas could succeed quite easily.

“Our economy is about 30 percent larger than that of Australia,” boasts Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate who hails from Arlington, a Dallas suburb.

Kilgore has plans to legally change the Scott in his name to "SECEED," in capital letters.

“Australia can survive on their own, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem at all surviving on our own in Texas," added Kilgore.

Some of the organizations supporting Texas secession, many formed prior to Obama's first election, are:

• TexasSecession (www.TexasSecession.com) 817-453-5744
• Texas Nationalist Movement (www.texasnationalist.com) is dedicated to keeping Texas free of abuse by the federal government, in existence since 1994
• Republic of Texas (www.texasrepublic.info) documents the annexation of Texas as a U.S. state as having been a fraud in the first place, and reclaims the Republic's sovereignty. Contact:trep777@dctexas.net
• Free Texas Constitution (freetexasconstitution.wordpress.com) aims to provide an outline for concepts to be incorporated in the new Constitution for the independent Republic of Texas.

Whether or not secession is successful, it's true that Texans are loading up on guns, according to a recent report of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Though many say their reason to stockpile weapons has nothing to do with politics, other Texans point to Obama's anti-gun policies as reason to buy now. One weapon manufacturer notes national firearm sales have grown ten percent each year since Obama was first elected.

Finally, as also noted in the Star, "The point is, we have a federal government that's designed to give unhappy people a chance to come back and change things in the next election." As Billy Bob Anonymous noted, many Texans believe there is more than one way to get rid of "p---ants," who "mess with Texas."

Texas secession petition response: White House deadline nears - National Political Transcripts | Examiner.com

What would happen if Texas actually seceded?

By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – 12 hrs ago

• http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/eN...-the-union.jpgEnlarge Photo

Secession fever has struck much of red America after President Obama's re-election. And that's got a lot of people asking "what if...?""Talk of secession is in the air," says Brett Arends at MarketWatch. At least a small number of people in each of the 50 states have filed petitions on the White House website "We The People" asking that their state be allowed to leave the Union.

Under rules laid out by President Obama, any petition that gets 25,000 "signatures" in 30 days earns an official response: At least seven states have more than 30,000 signatures, and the Texas petition had more than 117,000 as of Nov. 26. All of this secession fever "comes 150 years after the Civil War, and just in time for Steve Spielberg's biopic of Abraham Lincoln, the man whom we have to thank — if that’s the word I want — for the continued forcible marriage of the once-independent states." Of course, nobody really expects any state to openly revolt and agitate for independence, but what would happen if they did?

Here's what you should know:
First off: Do states have the right to secede?
No. Like "nullification" — the idea that states can unilaterally ignore a federal law they don't like — secession "is one of those extra-legal concepts that was hotly debated during the decades leading up to the Civil War," says Richard Dunham in the Houston Chronicle. Nullification and secession threats have popped up in the 150 year since, but the question was mostly settled at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. "The bottom line is that any state — or confederation of states — can illegally secede from the Union. But the result, as we discovered in 1861, is Civil War."
SEE ALSO: Out-of-this world storage space

Are there any exceptions?
No — although lots of Texans believe their state has a special "opt-out" clause (31 percent, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll). Part of that may be due to Gov. Rick Perry (R), who told a crowd that year that when the former Republic of Texas "came in the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave, if we decided to do that." But he was wrong, says Jeff Turrentine at Slate. "Texas' so-called 'right' to secede is no more than a politically emboldening myth, the boastful residue of the decade it spent as a sovereign nation before joining America." Still, the Lone Star State does have "an unusual ace up its sleeve" — its annexation papers do allow Texas to unilaterally split in to as many as five states. Some Texas Republicans posit that faced with the threat of eight new Republicans tilting the balance of the Senate, Washington would let the Texas offshoots leave without a fight.

What would happen if the feds let states go peacefully?
First of all, "it would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish," says Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. That's because most states threatening to secede are part of the old Confederacy, and "low tax" southern red states typically get "far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes." Each California and New Jersey taxpayer, for example, pays thousands each year to subsidize residents of Louisiana and Alabama — the lone exception is Texas, which, thanks to oil revenue, comes out about even, tax-wise.
SEE ALSO: 21st century copycat

And what about residents of unshackled red states?
If you're in a state intent on bolting the Union, there is good tax news, says MarketWatch's Arends: "You will be liberated from the sheer living hell of the federal tax code." Of course, you'll also "get fewer government services." Also, your newly independent nation "will go into recession, and fast."

The feds would take back their highway, airport, and university research funding, and maybe even demand a refund, says the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in an editorial. Obama would close down or repossess federal courthouses, prisons, national parks, and military bases that pump tens of billions each into local economies.

Plus, Texas and other newly minted nations would have to pay for their own militaries, says Jack Simmons at the UT-Arlington Shorthorn. "We would also need some form of health care, some sort of disaster relief, a postal service, welfare, social security, FDA, CIA, FBI — the list goes on," totaling well over a trillion dollars. "And that's just start-up costs."

So why is secession so popular?
It's not, really. Even in Texas, the hotbed of the secession movement, support for breaking free is limited to "a loud but small minority," says the Houston Chronicle's Dunham. Rasmussen clocked it at 18 percent. In other words, "more Texans believe in UFOs than in secession." Mostly, secession talk is just a silly way to register disappointment in the election results, says Glenn Harlan Reynolds at USA Today. Remember "in 2004, when disappointed Democrats were talking about secession, and circulating maps of America divided into 'The United States of Canada' and 'Jesusland'"? But there are serious reasons, too: Some states "feel that the central government doesn't respect them, forces them to live under laws they find repugnant, and takes their money away to pay off its own supporters."

The way to fix that is giving states more power — in other words, returning to the federalism the U.S. was founded under. "It's a nice plan. Beats secession."

http://news.yahoo.com/happen-texas-actually-seceded-114000495.html

bttt

DIVORCE AGREEMENT Dear liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Communists

The person who wrote this is a college student. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.

DIVORCE AGREEMENT


THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL DONE - HARD TO BELIEVE IT WAS WRITTEN BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al: We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a our separation agreement:

--Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

--We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.

--You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.

--Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.


--We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and the coal mines, and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.

--You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

--We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.

--You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.

--We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.

--We'll keep Bill O?Reilly, and Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

--You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

--You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

--We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.

--You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

--We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Volt and Leaf you can find.

--You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.

--We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National Anthem."

--I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".

--We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

--Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you might think about which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,

John J. Wall
Law Student and an American


P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin & Charlie Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & ( Hanoi ) Jane Fonda with you.

P.S.S. And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

Forward This Every Time You Get It ! Let's Keep This Going, Maybe Some Of It Will Start Sinking In!!

Nullification, Secession, Civil War?

Posted by Rev. Larry Wallenmeyer Admin II on December 4, 2012 at 3:29pm in Constitutional Issues
View Discussions


http://www.westernjournalism.com/wp-...emocrat-SC.jpg

Headlines Since November 6th-

Secession Movement Explodes: 675,000 signatures, 50-state participation

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Less than a week after a New Orleans suburbanite petitioned the White House to allow Louisiana to secede from the United States, petitions from seven states have collected enough signatures to trigger a promised review from the Obama administration.

By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

Source-

http://patriotupdate.com/32733/secession-movement-explodes-675000-s...

===========================================


White House ‘secede’ petitions reach 675,000 signatures, 50-state participation

2:01 AM 11/14/2012


...The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin. Shortly before 9:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, it had attracted 94,700 signatures. But a spokesperson for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday afternoon that he does not support the idea of his state striking out on its own.

“Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it. But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

A backlash Monday night saw requests filed with the White House to strip citizenship rights from Americans who signed petitions to help states secede. (RELATED: Anti-secession forces fight back with White House deportation petit...)

And in a similar nose-thumbing aimed at Texas’ conservative majority, progressives from the liberal state capital of Austin responded Monday with a petition to secede from their state if Texas as a whole should decide to leave the Union.

Late Tuesday a second group of Texans, this one from Houston, lodged their own White House petition. Secession-minded Texans, they wrote, “are mentally deficient and [we] do not want them representing us. We would like more education in our state to eradicate their disease.”...

...Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.

Other states with multiple efforts include Alaska, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The White House provides a 30-day window of time for petitions to reach 25,000 signatures.

Source-
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/14/white-house-secede-petitions-reac...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

November 14, 2012 by Tim Brown

Secession Movement Sweeps All 50 States

Since my first report of Texas and Louisiana residents petitioning the feder..., the numbers have grown, until now all 50 states have petitions going and many of them have already succeeded in making their goal and toppin..., which triggers an official response from the White House.

While some commenters have claimed that is was only a 100,000 or so people that were pushing this, the figures are pushing upwards of 1 million and that is just since Saturday. The petitions are gaining national attention and I’ve received many emails in support of the effort and some that are against it...

...But here’s the good news. These petitions to peacefully withdraw so a common unity around the principles that the Founders united around. Remember, the Revolutionary War was not wanted by the majority of the people.

...State Contacts-

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampsire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Source-
http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/secession-movement-sweeps-all-50-...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


The Secessionist Movement And Our Ideological Divide

November 18, 2012 By Richard Larsen


...Interestingly, however, Thomas Jefferson seemed to think contrarily. In a letter penned in 1825, Jefferson said, that states “should separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers. Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no hesitation.”

The head of the Texas Nationalist Movement, Daniel Miller, said this past week, “The fact of the matter is, that there cannot be a union between those that esteem the principles of Karl Marx over the principles of Thomas Jefferson. Here in Texas, we esteem those principles of Thomas Jefferson – that all political power’s inherent in the people.”...

...Aside from illustrating a few of the points of disaffection of our divided America, this exercise, especially if carried to logical conclusions, provides an insight into what the state of the nation would degenerate to if unbridled liberalism had its way. Succinctly, their agenda is untenable without the morality and financial resources of the taxpayers, producers, employers, laborers, and middle class of the right. Eventually the blue states would be at the doorstep of the red states pleading for a bailout and a rescue plan.

Clearly, there will be no secessionist states, or division of resources like a divorce settlement. But the depth and breadth of our cultural divide is clearly bifurcated. I guess we’ll just have to cope like embattled spouses in an unhappy marriage, and try to get along as best we can. This may require some compromises along the way, but that means giving a little on both sides, not just a caving in by the red side.

Source-

http://www.westernjournalism.com/the-secessionist-movement-and-our-...

------------------------------------------------

[NOTE: I am 100% OPPOSED to any and all compromise. Conservatives have had enough Compromise since 1912! STICK TO CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES! DO NOT BACK DOWN ONE IOTA!]


---------------------------------------------

Other Head-Lines-


http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/petitions-to-white-house-grant-tx...

and,


http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/texas-secession-petition-tops-goa...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +

[NOTE: The articles from Freedom Outpost reflect a decided Confederate/Democrat bias.]

=======

Civil War?

http://jonathanturley.files.wordpres...ldiers2eee.jpg While I do not support secession, I DO understand the frustration, and I DO support the principles for such, whereas I did NOT when The Democrat South seceded to protect the State "Right" of Slavery.

But whether I support the principles this time or not, I do not promote Secession simply because The Left will NOT let us "just go"...hence why I am also against a Civil War.


So Civil War is not a "solution".

BUT what can "We The People" DO?!

Nullification.

Sources-

http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-...
and,

Watkins: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions


YES.


I DO 100% support, promote and call for ALL States to exercise their 9th, 10th and 11th Amendment Rights and nullify, make null and void ALL non-Constitutional "laws".

So you can use those State links above and instead of petitioning for secession- PETITION FOR NULLIFICATION...begin with Obama-Care and go from there.

BE CONSERVATIVE.
WIN.

Nullification, Secession, Civil War? - Patriot Action Network

Population, United States

311,591,917 - Jul 2011

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

bad analogy... less than 2 percent fought the British and what is going on is in the beggining stages... either way, I dont care; but it would be nice to stop being robbed blind by the Democrats and Republicans

Secession 101

Posted by Jim Delaney on December 4, 2012 at 5:03pm in General, Town Hall
View Discussions


Some Advice to "Secession Petitioners"


Historically, short of revolution or rebellion, secession is the ultimate practical check on centralization.

http://ts3.mm.bing.net/th?id=I.48493...h=138&c=7&rs=1 No branch of the federal government is empowered to decide upon the merits of a State's inherent right to secede. By its very nature, secession is an anti-federal act not requiring federal sanction.

Petitioning the federal government for permission to secede is self-contradictory and has no basis in English common law or American constitutional history. Secession/rescission/withdrawal is a unilateral action and is not dependent upon mutual agreement between the parties to that contract.

When one enters into a contract and the other party violates that contract, does one request permission of the offending party to withdraw from that contract already violated? Of course not. All compacts are subject to the equitable remedy of rescission in the event of a breach of contract. It's really common sense, basic contract law. It's that straightforward.

At its inception, the US of A was a voluntary compact (contract) of sovereign States, each retaining the inherent authority to rescind its contractual relationship with the federal government, the other party to that contract, should the latter violate the terms of that contract/compact. That contractual relationship hasn't changed, though the misnamed "civil war" may have led us to believe otherwise. (By the way, "civil war" means that two or more factions are militarily struggling over control of the central government; however, in America's so-called "civil war", the South was defending its sovereign territory, not entertaining the capture and control of the central government in DC.)

Force of arms alone by a revisionist, self-contradictory, union-at-any-price nationalist, that being our heretofore venerated Abe Lincoln, cannot--and did not--invalidate a State's inherent right to secede, or to otherwise rescind its ratificaton of this contract, no more than the federal government can legally or constitutionally annul the People's right to rebel in the face of tyranny.

Note: if secession were treasonous, which some maintained it was, why then were not southern leaders dragged into court following the North's successful invasion of the Confederate States of America? Easy. Because the North didn't want to lose in court what they thought they had won on the battlefield.

Perpetual union at any price was never contemplated or embraced by the Founders. Rebellion, secession, nullification, civil disobedience remain essential elements of America's republican fabric, and the threat or application of force on the part of the federal government cannot eradicate those foundational, inherent and unalienable rights of a free people.

When ratifying the Constitution, and only to the extent that it delegated certain of its sovereign powers to the federal government, not once did any State surrender its sovereignty. All powers voluntarily granted by the States to the federal government were very limited and very specific. All other powers not delegated remained with the States.

The 10th Amendment enshrined that principle in the Constitution and, in so doing, reasserted the foundational principle that the federal government cannot unilaterally redefine the limits of its powers. To join the union, the States were not compelled to surrender anything, much less their sovereignty.

And remember, we not only seceded from England, but also, one by one, from the Articles of Confederation (which was said to be "perpetual") in order to form the current union of States, a union which was initially comprised of but 9 States, the remaining 3 sovereign States freely opting to remain outside the union until well after the Constitution's adoption. This "MORE perfect union"--MORE perfect, NOT perfect--was not intended or expected to exist in perpetuity, but, like the Articles of Confederation, only until such time that the compact outlived its usefulness. Our Founders, studious historians, were not stupid men and well understood the corruptibility of men and all that man may devise. While our Founders hoped the union would be strong, free and productive, they did not view secession and dissolution as ill-conceived, treasonous or unanticipated. We've just been brainwashed into believing that secession and dissolution are vile, wrong, corrupt and treasonous. Not so at all. If that were true, then our Founders were charlatans and short-sighted fools. They weren't.

All that said, as a first step I recommend that States opt for nullification, the "rightful remedy" as Jefferson described it, to resist unconstitutional acts by the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Chief Executive and their myriad bureaucracies which now comprise the unofficial fourth branch of government. And to render nullification more efficacious, States should enact punitive laws to prohibit the enforcement of those federal acts nullified by the State. This is called "interposition", or a State's insinuating itself between intrusive federal authority and the citizens of the State. Interposition would actually require the arrest, trial and imprisonment of any State OR federal agent who attempts to enforce a nullified federal act. Of course, implicit in nullification is the threat of secession should the invasive federal government fail to retreat to contractual parameters. But, again, secession is not by its nature treasonous or unavoidably violent. Not at all.

Finally, while I sincerely appreciate the wave of secessionist sentiment sweeping the country, secession, a serious constitutional matter, requires a majority of a State's residents to support the act. Anything less than a majority constitutes a protest and nothing more. And even with a majority expressing its support for secession, the people's State representatives must be won over as well, this if the label of "insurrection" is to be avoided and Art I Sec 8 Para 15 be invoked. Note: per Art IV Sec 4 of the Constitution, "on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)", the feds can be asked to intervene, whether that intervention is morally repugnant or not. Secession is a political act, not merely a feel-good act. Thus, on the subject of secession, both the people of a State and their duly elected State representatives must be one.

So, to the near one million well-intentioned petitioners around the country, this: without a majority within a State as well as State legislative support, secession is an impossibility. Great PR--maybe--but nothing more.

"The source of Lincoln's power was his willingness to exercise power not grounded in the orginal Constitution but in in his creative abilities to undermine the Constitution while rhetorically defending it." Donald Livingston, "Rethinking the American Union..."

"The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter their constitution." William Rawles (1825)

Secession 101 - Patriot Action Network