Ever since Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested that his state might secede from the union if things in Washington don't start going more to his liking, I've been wanting to ask: What's stopping him?

I realize a lot of people consider his empty threat to be anti-American if not borderline treason, and maybe it is. Then again, what's a little sedition among friends?

I've always subscribed to the philosophy that it takes two to keep a relationship going. If one party really wants out, I say let 'em go. It's better than talking to a brick wall, less humiliating than begging and more expedient than lawyers. And, in many cases, it winds up being a huge relief.

Plus, if we love something, aren't we supposed to set it free? And if it doesn't come back, wasn't it never ours to begin with?

Take Arlen Specter, as the Democrats did this week with open arms. A long time ago, he left them seeking fame and influence -- and found it in the GOP. Forty years later he's come home again. Barack Obama and Joe Biden did everything short of killing the fatted calf to welcome him back to the fold. If anybody on the increasingly alienated Republican side tried to talk him out of it, it wasn't apparent.

It's been clear for some time that the GOP had listed way too far to the right for Mr. Specter to stay on board. Whether he jumped or walked the plank is beside the point. Some 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans defected to the Democrats during last November's election, leaving a shrunken party comprised mostly of hard-right conservatives who prefer their politicians pure. Rather than lose the primary, the wily pol did what seemed necessary to hang on to power.

This, of course, put the Dems within one seat of a filibuster-proof Senate majority. Theoretically speaking, that is. One of Mr. Specter's first acts as a reinvented Democrat was to vote against Mr. Obama's budget proposal, the better to prove that he's nobody's boy.

Anyway, it seems that Mr. Perry is thinking about power in a similar vein. He and the lieutenant governor of Texas are Republicans, as are the secretary of state, comptroller and attorney general. A majority of both houses of the state legislature are Republican. So are both U.S. senators and 20 of 32 members of Congress. And while secession would leave this last group unemployed, they could perhaps find work tracking down cases of swine flu, since the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta would be an alien entity unable to help.

Still, with those numbers, the Texas GOP could run its own country without another thought to the pesky Democratic majority in Washington. Barack Obama would be just another foreign potentate. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi could pursue their leftist-fascist-jihad agenda with no consequences to the Republic of Texas, or ROT.

I should note here that I have nothing against the Lone Star State. My brother lived there for 25 years, his wife was born and bred there and all my visits there have been truly delightful.

True, it has that whole Bush family thing to answer for, but you can't blame the whole state for that, just a sizeable portion of it.

Still, much as I would miss the blue bonnets and Indian paintbrushes, Billy Bob's in Fort Worth and the San Antonio Riverwalk, it might be worth it to ensure that no more Texans could ever become president of the United States.

Also, if most of those undocumented workers were flowing into a third country instead of the United States, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck would have to find something else to complain about. And that half-billion dollars in federal stimulus money that Texas could have collected for unemployment benefits during the worst economic mess since the Great Depression, well, the U.S. could use it to teach evolution, real sex education and science-based science courses.

I asked my brother what ramifications he foresaw for a Texas secession. As always, he cut to heart of the matter.

• The boom in fence-building along the border with Mexico would be enough to kill the drug cartels.

• Matthew McConaughey would become a foreign actor, so we Americans could stop wondering what anybody sees in him.

• Grasshoppers the size of javelinas (wild pigs) could be the Texas national mascot.

• A whole other nation would separate Texas from Canada, thus easing tensions.

• With global warming on the rise, Rick Perry would become another banana republic dictator, all the more difficult to deal with as he veers toward socialism.

• What is inarguably the world's best barbecue would become exotic cuisine.

• One would need a passport to run over an armadillo.

• The next time the Longhorns are defeated by the Sooners, Texas would become Nuevo Oklahoma.

His wife, the native Texan, added her own entry to the list.

• The 43 percent of Texans who voted, variously, for Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore and Bill Clinton would have to arm themselves to the teeth to fend off marauding Republicans unfettered by federal law. In the end, a whole lot of Texans would kill each other off, creating less pollution.

If at some point these outcomes turn out to be less enjoyable than secessionist Texans imagined, they can always ask to return to the union. We might even take them -- but one clause would have to be grandfathered in. That thing about no more Texans in the White House still goes.