Louisiana petitions White House to secede

Yes, I agree, terrible headline.

However, I've never before seen a petition like this on the White House Petitions site, so when they get the number of supporters, the White House is obligated to "respond". That's where it could get interesting. The problem is, they won't actually respond. They'll do what they always do with all the other petitions that make them look bad: they'll sidestep the issue, or say why it violates their terms of the Petitions site. It'll never get answered.

Keep TX out of it, troll.

I would say that this isn't very serious at all. Anyone can create a petition on that site, "Louisiana" isn't asking for this, some person in Louisiana is. That state is the size of my country, if someone in my country decided to try and make a decision like this for everyone I would be fucking pissed.

Even if this reaches the threshold, it's still only a tiny fraction of the state population. What is to stop this state going into a Civil War? There is probably equal or more that would want to stay as part of the US.

Honestly, this is a really stupid submission to HN.

I'm not American, but this submission feels pretty devoid of content and is more something that belongs on /r/politics.

Anyone is free to create a petition on petitions.whitehouse.gov

This particular petition has only about 8000 signatures, the population of louisiana is 4,574,836 since 2011.

As a previous commenter pointed out, this is the petition of several individual citizens, and not any kind of official action by the State of Louisiana. Furthermore, a petition on Whitehouse.gov has absolutely no legal significance, and only minimal political significance (this one is likely to be completely ignored by the White House). Thus, this action has no consequences.

The Declaration of Independence[1], which the petition cites, has historical significance, but is not a part of U.S. law. If I remember correctly, the U.S. Constitution[2] (the underlying basis of U.S. law) does not mention any mechanism whereby states can secede from the U.S., which means that the government would have no legal authority to allow Louisiana to secede.

Historically, Louisiana and several other southern states seceded from the United States in the 19th Century and fought the Civil War[3] against the remaining states. After losing the war, the southern states were eventually re-integrated into the U.S.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

They're mad that Obama wont he election. The Declaration of Independence, while not possessing the force of Law like the Constitution, states that the powers of the government arise only from the consent of the governed, and that since they did not consent to a second Obama term they want to leave the Union.

What's interesting is that the US today seems more strongly divided than at any time since immediately after the Civil War. Secession is not necessarily impossible in this environment, and imagine what would happen if the USA fell into open civil war again. Added to this is the fact the the US Territory of Puerto Rico seems to be closer to Statehood than ever before. So we could lose one and gain one in short order.

Louisiana was one of the states in open rebellion during the Civil War. If anybody's going to do it, it's a Southern state like Louisiana (or Texas, but at least Texas can take care of itself.)

Perhaps also the reasoning behind it. Why Louisiana? Why at all?