Quotation Of The Day: Getting Rid Of Texas Edition

The Washington Post recently asked several people to list " ideas, traditions, people and places we'd be better off without." Thomas E. Ricks offers the most interesting suggestion: get rid of Texas.

After all, what has Texas given us? Without it, we might have avoided the presidents who gave us two of our longest and least necessary wars — Vietnam and Iraq — and John F. Kennedy might still be alive.

We wouldn’t have the Dallas Cowboys, nor the right-wing oilmen the state seems to produce. Of course, we would also lose Gov. Rick Perry, who already is making the split easier with his talk of moving the roughly $1 billion in Texas gold reserves, now in a vault in New York, back into the state.

There’s a lot of great music out of Texas, from Lightnin’ Hopkins and Bob Wills to Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Lyle Lovett and Archie Bell & the Drells. But we could still listen to them, just as we enjoy the sounds of such Canadian crooners as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Feist.