So Long, Pardner.(The Talk of the Town)(rallies on tax hike)

QUESTION: What do you think about the idea of secession or sovereignty for your state?, GOVERNOR PERRY, OF TEXAS: Oh, I think there's a lot of different scenarios.

On April 15th, a.k.a. tax day, protest rallies promoted by conservative lobbyists and Fox News television hosts attracted a couple of hundred thousand people to a couple of hundred locations around the country. The rallies were called "tea parties"--more mad than Boston, by the look and sound of them--with "tea" standing for "Taxed Enough Already." The partygoers' main target was President Obama's plan for an enormous tax hike, under which, starting in 2011, persons with incomes in excess of a quarter-million dollars could see their top marginal rate go from thirty-five per cent to 39.6. This means that a fellow making, for example, three hundred grand could see his tax bill go up $34.62 per week. (In a typical liberal trick, most people making under a quarter mil, which is to say ninety-seven per cent of us, are getting a reduction.)

Lifting the burden of taxation from the backs of the comfortable is no longer the exciting new panacea it was back in the nineteen-eighties. But another proposal that the tea parties were buzzing about merits the respectful consideration of concerned citizens: Governor Rick Perry's suggestion that Texas might end its association with the United States of America and strike out on its own.

Independence wouldn't be a huge stretch for Texas. It already has its own national flag, left over from its decade as a sovereign republic. As a result, transition expenses should be minimal. At the Austin tea party, Governor Perry, still flushed with the excitement of denouncing federal oppression from the platform, told reporters, "When we came in the union, in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that." He added, a little ominously:

My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We've got a great Union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that.

Or, translated into New Yorkese: Nice little Union you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

The Governor is mistaken about Texas having been admitted to the Union with an opt-out provision; the actual deal was that Texas, with Congress's permission, could theoretically divide itself into five states. Exiting the United States is not as simple as resigning from a restricted country club. Since "the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union" (Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Texas v. White, 1869), Perry would need either a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court chock-full of Scaliaesque "originalists."