While I was on vacation in the Bahamas, it seems that Rick Perry, our Governor, hinted that Texas could always secede from the Union if it did not like the political direction out of Washington. He apparently made the comments in Austin at one of several "tea parties".
Don't get me started on the irredeemable stupidity behind the tea party concept - the Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation without representation, while America was a disenfranchised colony of Great Britain. The current "tea parties" are nothing more than publicity stunts by a bunch of pissed voters who have taxation with representation - just not the representation that they voted for. In short, this is nothing more than childish petulance from sore losers.
It seems that Perry has since been heard trying to walk back from his original comments...oops, sorry, I meant he has been clarifying his comments, but in the meantime, his comments have ignited a predictable storm of comment. Political luminaries such as Ron Paul (ho-hum) and Tom DeLay (somebody save us from this fuckwit) have weighed in with their own comments.
I first encountered some Texas secessionists in the UseNet days, when a discussion broke out in a UseNet group about whether Texas could secede. I got myself into a vigorous, but ultimately frustrating debate with one of them, when I pointed out that the U.S. Constitution has no defined process for secession, for Texas or for any other state. It does not forbid secession, but there is no process defined anywhere for how a state can secede. The secessionist that I was arguing with waved aside this issue with a bland "it does not prohibit secession so we can secede if we want to", but totally failed to answer the obvious question "how would you do this?". He also seemed to be unwilling to address any of the practical issues of secession, such as what pro-rated percentage of the US National Debt should be assumed by Texas when it secedes. This, by the way, was one of the issues that choked off the last serious attempt by Quebec to secede from Canada in the mid-1990's, when the then-PM Brian Mulroney told the Parti Quebecois that Quebec would have to assume a pro-rata share of the Canadian national debt if it succeeded. If you want to leave the club, you have to settle your bar bills...if the other states decide to apportion the debt amount on the basis of land area, then Texas is bankrupt from day 1.
The practical reality is that Texas is not seceding from the Union any time soon, and any public figure who suggests that it is even a possibility is engaging in empty bloviation of the most facile kind, bordering on stupid.