Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was on the receiving end of a lot of derision (from decadent liberal coastal elites, of course) when he suggested last month at a teabag rally that Texas might consider seceeding from the United States. Perry was articulating a sentiment that, according to at least one recent poll, gains the support of nearly half of Texas Republicans (and a third of Texans overall). This week, one of the leading exponents of the decadent liberal coastal elite worldview, Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, takes a closer look at the idea and games out out the benefits for the rest of the country if the states of the Old Confederacy somehow were to leave the union.

It's a smart, funny piece, worth a read in its own right, though it also reminded me that we had our own controversy along similar lines a few years back when a number of conservative Eastern Washington legislators suggested the idea of splitting the state in two. At the time, I conducted a similar exercise to Hertzberg, and came up with similar conclusions. You can read it here.