By Cale Ottens
Cronkite News
A post-election petition calling on the federal government to let Arizona secede from the union was pulled from the White House website Monday, after it failed to get the 25,000 signatures needed to guarantee an administration response.
Few appeared to take the petition seriously. More than 40 secession petitions from various states went up after the election on the White House site, which also includes petitions calling for the development of a Death Star by 2016 and demanding legalization of mescaline and magic mushrooms.
But what if the secession petition had been serious? It would have been a serious mistake, said Gregg Cawley, a University of Wyoming professor who has written on the relationship between Western states and the federal government.
“Suppose they do get permission to secede. Now what?” Cawley asked when the petition was posted in November.
