Texas Can't Secede

When an exasperated Gov. Rick Perry suggested this week that Texas should leave the United States over its tax rates, reporters at The Dallas Morning News got to wondering: Does Texas actually have the right to secede? A shocking 31 percent of Texans believe that their state retains the right to become an independent country, and 18 percent said that if they could, they would want Texas to secede. Who's going to tell them that Texas doesn’t retain the right to secede—a fact laid out in the treaty on which it signed itself into statehood? The stir Perry has created may be nothing more than a little Civil War folklore, and a distraction from real issues Texas faces. The News reports. "We are an independent group. But the secession talk, Perry is just really trying to be a little bit too clever on this," one Republican consultant told the paper. “I don't think it's a good long-term strategy."