Secessionist Loopy Lous Pulling Out All The Stops...

... and are sailing off into new unconstitutional waters, mixed metaphor-wise.

(See Update At the Bottom of This Post)

Let me explain.  Over the past few days the mailbox here at Vermont Secession has been flooded with reports on, and arguments for,

numerous petitions advocating for secession that have been filed at the White House website that is maintained for that purpose that is called We the People: Your Voice in Our Government.

I really didn't pay any attention to effort since it is stupefyingly destined to fail.  So far there are 36 state specific petitions (in some cases 2 or 3 for some states, an unsurprising situation given the fractious, peevish nature of the average secession supporter).  Somehow it's escaped the attention of the secesher braintrust that (1) the President has no constitutional authority to entertain secession petitions; (2) in order to petition for the secession of a state one should at least have standing, that is, live in the frickin' state that your signing the petition on behalf of (some of these clowns are signing multiple petitions from a host of states - one North Dakota malcontent is the initiator of one of the two New York petitions); and (3) if they haven't heard of the Civil War, I'm sure then that the case White v. Texas (1869) will be well beyond the ken of the average secesher bonehead,

"(a) U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is “an indestructible union” from which no state can secede..."
"Writing for the court, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase commented that the federal Constitution 'in all its provisions looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.'"

One of the originators of this secesher cry for attention is a Texan whose racist blood boiled over when President Obama was reëlected, as reported in Fort Worth's Star-Telegram and in a post at the Trail Blazers Blog at The Dallas Morning News.  Mother Jones has a similar piece here.

Speaking of secesher boneheads - I'm looking at you Second Vermont Republic - one notably missing petition is the one from here in Vermont. Perhaps the White House threshold for notice and response is too high,

"As of October 3, 2011:"

"To cross the first threshold and be searchable within WhiteHouse.gov, a petition must reach 150 signatures within 30 days."

"To cross the second threshold and require a response, a petition must reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days."

Vermont seceshers have been notorious failures at getting signitors for their various petitions on their hobbyhorse du jour.  Maybe SVR or VTCommons have a submission but we'll never know unless they hit that magic one-five-oh, and there's zero chance that they'll get 25,000 real Vermonters to sign their petition.

In the meantime, I'll register at the WhiteHouse.gov website so I can sign the Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America and the Strip the Citizenship from Everyone Who Signed a Petition to Secede and Exile Them petitions.

We all get to play, no?

Update: Tuesday November 13, 9:53 PM: Vermont blogger ntoddpax had this whole sordid mess up two days ago here and here and his piece is now front paged at Vermont's top progressive blog, Green Mountain Daily.

Like me, ntoddpax would like to know where TF Vermont seceshers are on this muddled petition effort.

Update: Wednesday, November 14, 12:54 PM: A petition has appeared that would require that should a state leave, its portion of the national debt would be subject to collection on its way out that's titled Force All States to Pay Their Portion of the National Debt Before They Can Secede from the Union. Setting aside or the moment that no state may leave the Union (see Texas v. White (1869) above there history pertaining to the Union having acquired the debt of the states that began in 1790, a small portion of which may be read here. None of the many secesher petitions at the WhiteHouse.gov site address how they'd handle their portion of the debt - I wouldn't recommend taking a check from these clowns.

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