An apparent wave of post-election discontent has found its way online in the form of tens of thousands of people protesting the outcome of the presidential election by stoking the specter of secession. Maryland isn't among the states represented but all four of its neighbors are.
Disgruntled residents from dozens of states—from California to New Hampshire and Texas to Florida—are using the Internet to try to invoke their First Amendment right to “petition the government for redress of grievances” by asking the White House to allow their state to withdraw from the Union.
The White House's “We the People” program says the administration will respond to any petition that receives 25,000 or more signatures within 30 days. Petitions that have been popular in the past include one demanding the White House beer recipe and marijuana legalization, reports The Washington Post.
The petitions from Louisiana and Texas were approaching the threshold for a response. They were the first two states represented, followed by Alabama. Petitioners must be over 13 years old, and only have to put a first name and last initial on the site.
The Texas petition had topped 80,000 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon, enough to spur a response from Gov. Rick Perry but nothing yet from the Obama administration, the Dallas Morning-News reported.
Six other petitions had crossed 20,000: Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Meanwhile, a petition calling to “deport everyone” who has signed a secessionist petition was rapidly nearing 6,000 signatures.
The petitions for Maryland’s neighbors haven’t stirred the same sort of fever pitch—Virginia (2,170 signatures), Pennsylvania (8,745), Delaware (5,350) and West Virginia (3,280).
But we can't help imagining if they did leave.
There would be no more behind-the-scenes battling with Virginia for federal transit funding. Corporate tax shelters in Delaware would become an international imbroglio. And, West Virginia’s meddling with Maryland’s gambling referendum could have qualified as an affront carried out by foreign interlopers.
What do you think of the protest? Should Maryland be involved? Or can you imagine a more perfect union without some of these petitioners?
zep
10:41 pm on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
This wasn't so much about the phony hollywood election as it is the NDAA -the bill declaring the US a battleground, the nazified socialist agenda at play to destoy our Constitution, the charade of the Supreme Court, and the TREASON committed by our CIC supported by the brothel of the senate and congress. Did I neglect to mention the criminals that comprise the FED and Wall Street? All of you who think you're entitled to "Independence Cards" that working people sweat and suffer to pay for, COUNT YOUR DAYS. You have become so politically correct that you can't even recognize Hitler because he's not WHITE now.
jag
10:45 pm on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Please see a psychiatrist.
CJ
11:54 pm on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Get a grip, Zep. Feel free to self-deport. Obviously you don't want to stay in this enclave of unified conspiring communist-socialist radical liberals. Oh, by the way, our founding fathers were radical, oh-please-don't say it's so, radical liberals, too. You would have been a Tory. And I guess FDR and his god forbid Social(ist) Security would have been too liberal, too. Mr. Lincoln probably was too liberal for you as well because he sought to preserve the union, imperfect though it may be, and ultimately freed the slaves, too. While you so frothingly denounce and indict your countrymen on the winning side through your bizarre rant, I wonder would the secesshers have been resurrected had Romney won? .
Ddad99
8:57 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
You forgot about the cult of personality surrounding our incompetent President.
How else could he be reelected with the economy in the tank? It's all about the perception, not reality.
JTS53
7:15 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Please direct me to the adult version of Patch.
Matt Rider
8:25 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Anyone want to contact and American Psychiatric Association and see if we can get a Sore Loser Personality Disorder entered into the next edition of the DSM?
Michael Shapiro
10:52 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Please hurry, they are compiling it now.
Solomon Landers
8:31 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
The Civil War has already been fought and won. After that battle, the Presidential Proclamation dated August 20, 1866, states very clearly in the following passage that no state had the right to leave the Union (emphasis added in all capitals)
"THAT IT IS THE MANIFEST DETERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT NO STATE, OF ITS OWN WILL, HAS A RIGHT OR POWER TO GO OUT OF OR SEPARATE ITSELF FROM, OR BE SEPARATED FROM THE AMERICAN UNION; and that, therefore, each State ought to remain and constitute an integral part of the United States."
Some people are just poor losers.
LeszX
12:50 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
A Presidential Proclamation does not overrule the Constitution.
Candy
7:35 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
I agree with LeszX but did you also forget that Texas even joined the Union had it stated clear as day they we could seperate whenever we feel free.... what about that one?
Michael Smith
8:38 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
It's a shame that if you want to leave a country that you love but who's policies you now disagree with, you are doing it illegally unless you fork over a significant portions of your life savings.
Also then you get to pick from another fascist country who's policies mirror the country you're leaving because the powers that be all take the same BS Political stance and learn from the same source material.
The reality is that regardless of what country you go to nowadays the Politicians are all crooked, the bribes you have to pay to do business are insane(sorry sorry, I meant "regulations" that you have to follow) and despite which land of the free you want to live in you'll run the risk of doing something "illegal".
The US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, one of the highest drug use rates on the planet, spends more on education with a worse payout than any other country on the planet, spends a little under 7x as much as the next country on our Military, and has a rapidly declining life expectancy and has a huge homeless and starving population.
I hate to say it but secession might be a good thing for this country, the Feds are already tearing this country apart one policy at a time by using a one size fits all approach to governing that bleeds the taxpayers dry.
Give us choice and we "might" have a fighting chance in the future.
bob
11:55 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
You have exactly no historical perspective of any of the topics you mention.
Regulations? You think there are MORE regulations today than 40 years ago?
Drug use? You think there's MORE drug use than 30 years ago?
Declining life expectancy? This one doesn't even make sense.
Homelessness and starvation? Are you insane? Compared to what time in history are more people starving to death today in this country?
Just another conservative, un-American (we're fascists? seriously?) nutjob whining and having exactly zero education and ability to do so in a way that makes any sense.
Eric S.
11:05 am on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
People who disagreed with Bush Jr. also freaked out and cried secession for blue states or moving to Canada when he got re-elected. There just wasn't a White House petition form then, so it didn't make the news.
On a side note, the White House is the last place to look for this. Those people need to contact their state legislatures and/or Congress. The office of the President already has too much real (I have no idea when executive orders became so common and binding, but Bush W. used them a ton, and Obama moreso) and symbolic power (the "president", no matter who it is somehow is considered to have godlike power over the economy and other huge matters, yet nobody holds their own actual lawmakers accountable) as it is. If you don't like the guy, do you want to give him MORE power that's not in the Constitution?!
Seriously.
LeszX
12:48 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
The United States came into existence through a war of secession against Great Britain. So for Americans, secession should be a most patriotic concept.
The right of peaceful secession is the only check on the excessive power of the federal government. Federal courts, federal legislatures, and federal executives will not willingly part with the power they have accumulated. Only the several states can effectively counterbalance the power of the federal government.
Those who oppose the right of peaceful secession should be aware that they are asking for the opposite - bloody revolution.
The problem with Maryland is that too much of the economy is dependent on the federal government - people either working as direct employees of the government, employees of firms with government contracts, or businesses with a significant customer base conisting of the first two groups. This is a symptom of the problem of an overgrown federal government.
The time when Maryland could have seceeded has passed - it was about the time President Lincoln had a good portion of the Maryland legislature locked up on charges of "disloyalty" - 151 years ago.
Such is the way of tyrants - then and now.
Eric S.
1:09 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
I actually have no issue with the idea of peaceful secession. I just think the petitioners hitting the White House are barking up the wrong tree.
On a similar note, this is a handful of people in various states using the internet to make it sound like they speak for the whole state. I doubt the majority of people in most of these states would go for it. Even if every state shown in the petition maps did manage to secede, it's their overall loss economically. That's even more the case if any of them have portions that decide they DON'T want to secede, a la West Virginia being the part of VA that didn't want to go.
LeszX
1:26 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Eric S - agreed. The White House petition site is not representative of the will of the people of the several states. However, it has served to bring the secession issue into the public discourse.
We should let the people of each state decide. And if some portions of the state want to secede from the state - let the people in those areas decide.
I am skeptical of the claims of economic loss. First, money coming back to the states from the federal government comes with strings attached. Second, this is a federal government that is spending more than it is taking in - so the overall economic gain to the state (of staying in the Union) - is not sustainable.
Eric S.
3:44 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
I'm just saying that this ends up in public discourse pretty much ever presidential election, whenever congress passes something unpopular, we go to war, etc. I'm actually a big enough fan of states rights (to a certain extent) that I'd love to see someone try.
As a note, I also agree that Federal funds (especially for stuff like education) come with strings. That said, how many of these states have military bases? Federal interstate systems? Entry points from other countries that get federal patrolling? Subsidized farming (which, btw, means you have a large company getting said funds that will be more than happy to turn said area into a banana republic)?
I'd really love to see a shakeup. Frankly, the US is getting really out of whack lately, the shock to the system of even a real secession vote would shift the discourse a bit. Hell, even if we just cut up a few of the existing states that don't tend to agree across the whole state (i.e. Virginia, California, New York, etc.), I'd be thrilled to see the fun hit the fan.
brian
7:50 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2012
I don't get it--what's stopping the people who signed the petitions from leaving the country? Too lazy?
jag
12:20 am on Thursday, November 15, 2012
Well, you can be sure the majority of these loonies aren't exactly the most skilled and educated people our country has to offer. Why would any first world country be willing to take our Alabama/Louisiana/Mississippi garbage?
Dusty
12:30 pm on Thursday, November 15, 2012
The people on the Eastern Shore, and parts of Del. and Va are trying to form a new state called Delmarva. Are they Traitors???? MD. has 24 counties. 18 counties voted for Romney, and 6 counties voted for Obama. Something here. JMO.
Red White and Blue
1:45 pm on Monday, November 19, 2012
We are all doomed in this together, the only ones who won anything are the illegals.