By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
The Alabama secession petition has received 26,022 signatures, easily surpassing the 25,000 siqnatures goal needed for the White House to respond to the citizen’s petition, according to the White House website.
The petition initiative was established by the Obama White House so that the federal government could be more responsive to the needs and wishes of the American people. 49% of the American people and over 60% of the people of Alabama voted for a new President in the November 6th reelection and many are apparently taking the loss hard. Some are taking the bitter defeat so badly that they are using the White House’s own petition function to ask President Obama to allow Alabama and at least 20 other states to leave the union and become their own nation.
According to original reporting by the Mobile Press Register’s George Talbot, Derrick Belcher of Chunchula started the Alabama petition after a Slidell Louisiana resident started the similar Louisiana secession petition. Belcher is asking Alabama Governor Robert Bentley to endorse his petition on behalf of the state.
Talbot and Al.com are reporting that Governor Bentley is happy being the Governor of Alabama and is not interested in being the first President of Alabama. The Governor’s spokeswoman Jennifer Ardis said, “Governor Bentley believes in one nation under God. While there is frustration with the federal government, Governor Bentley believes that states can be great laboratories of change.”
Texas has also received enough signatures and Texas Governor Rick Perry is also not going to endorse the secession effort.
In the petition (that mirrors the 20++ other state petitions) Derrick Belcher quotes from the Declaration of Independence: “”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.”
Ardis wrote, “As our leaders in Washington look for strategies to address America’s financial challenges, Alabama is working hard toward saving a billion dollars annually by right-sizing government. We can disagree on philosophy, but we should work together to make this country the best it can be. Our nation’s leaders can look at states like Alabama as they work to get our country back on a better and more prosperous track.”
