A second petition, posted on a website created by the Obama Administration, is asking for Washington state to be allowed to secede from the United States. It says the federal government represents a clear and present danger to citizens of the Evergreen State.
Washington is now one of more than 40 states named in petitions on the We the People site, asking to secede. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed the various petitions. Washington is among several states that have at least two petitions posted.
The site was designed to allow citizens to engage with the White House.
One of the petitions is titled Peacefully grant the State of Washington to peacefully withdraw from the United States and to form it's (sic) own government. It was posted Sunday, but did not appear prominently on the site until Wednesday.
Under the auspices of the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America the Citizens of the State of Washington take this grave action in an attempt to wrest sovereignty back unto itself so as to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, reads the petition. The Federal Government has overstepped it (sic) Constitutional authority and now represents a clear and present danger to the Citizens of Washington State and so we the undersigned assert our right to peacefully withdraw from the Union and to seek out a new means of securing our future liberty and economic prosperity.
The other petition, titled Peacefully grant the State of Washington to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government was created Tuesday. It uses a pair of passages from the Declaration of Independence that petitioners from several other states are also using.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government...
Neither petition is close to reaching 25,000 signers. The Obama Administration promises on the site that if a petition receives 25,000 signatures within 30 days of its launch, the petition will be reviewed and receive a response from a White House staffer.
At least six states have passed the 25,000 signee threshold, with Texas leading the way at over 100,000.
Other petitions have been launched in response, asking for people signing the secession petitions to be deported or to lose their citizenship for doing so. Another calls for forcing all states to pay their portion of the national debt before seceding, and one simply reads Keep the United States United.
Some of the other petitions, not related to secession, that are posted on the site include:
- Restore Objectivity and Fairness To Our Media
- Reform our Electoral College
- Remove tax-exempt status enjoyed by the Sea Shepherd Society
- We request that Obama be impreached
- Have President Obama Do The Hokey Pokey
