WHITE HOUSE INBOX SIZZLES

Obama’s re-election births secessionists

Petitions include one from Arkansas

— Apparently dissatisfied with the re-election of President Barack Obama, petitions from at least 36 states, including Arkansas, have flooded a White House website with requests to secede from the union.

Arkansas’ petition called upon the federal government to “peacefully grant the state of Arkansas to withdraw from the United States and create its own NEW government.”

It is not clear whether any group or person has coordinated the drive. The signers are not required to leave their full names and may sign petitions from multiple states. Along with 16,504 signers from places like Little Rock, Eureka Springs and Van Buren, scores of signers on the Arkansas petition came from places outside of the state, including Atlanta, Miami and Newport News, Va.

Some, like Texas’ petition, which had attracted 82,992 signatures Tuesday afternoon, expressed a desire to re-establish “the ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.”

There’s also a petition requesting that Texas’ capital city, Austin, secede from the Lone Star State and remain with the rest of the United States. It had over 1,000 signatures.

Another petition requested that the White House “deport everyone who signed a petition to withdraw their state.” It had gained 4,853 signatures Tuesday afternoon.

Arkansas tried to leave the United States once before, voting on May 6, 1861, to secede from the Union. An estimated 620,000 people died during the Civil War, which divided North and South.

Rep. elect-Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said he “strongly opposed” the signature drive. He said he was grateful that Abraham Lincoln held the Union together in the 19th century so that a strong United States could defeat the tyranny of Nazi Germany in the 20th century.

“America has been through tougher times that two terms of Barack Obama,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll come soaring back like we have in the past.”

In recent years, some political leaders have raised the possibility of secession. In 2009, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, suggested that his state could “leave anytime we want.”

The Dallas Morning News reported that Perry does not support the current petition drive.

On the other end of the political spectrum, Thomas Naylor a Vermont resident and professor emeritus at Duke University, has led the Second Vermont Republic since 2003. The leftist group, which calls itself part of the “Green Mountain Self-Determination Movement,” opposes maintaining ties to what Naylor calls an “empire that has lost its moral authority.”

Since secession was defeated as a result of the Civil War, Naylor said, there was no “legal paradigm” for groups of people who want to secede.

“Abraham Lincoln really did a number on us 150 years ago” by convincing people of all political stripes that secession is wrong, he said.

The White House has a policy of providing an official response to each petition that garners more than 25,000 signatures.

Several previous petitions have received a written reply.

For instance, after White House chefs brewed some presidential beer, 12,240 people asked for the recipe. The administration soon complied, and released the recipes for “White House Honey Ale” and “White House Honey Porter.”

And last year, when petitioners asked for an immediate halt on the use of monkeys in U.S. Army chemical casualty management training courses, Col. Thomas Collins, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Public Affairs, responded that, as part of a long-planned change, the service would no longer use the primates.

The petition can be found on the White House’s “We the People,” website at: https:// petitions.whitehouse.gov/

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/14/2012

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