Manassas Park Residents Not Among Virginians Who've Signed Secession Petition

In a move that seems to take the idea of red states and blue states one step further, residents unhappy with the results of the presidential election last week are signing petitions to secede from the union.

As of Tuesday, more than 8,000 Virginians were behind a petition (created on Sunday) to secede. The petition is located on the White House Web site.

While 24 residents from neighboring Manassas had joined the petition as of 2 p.m. Thursday, no one from Manassas Park had signed.

If seceding from the union sounds like something that happened during the Civil War era, you're correct: Virginia seceded from the union April 17, 1861, after the Nov. 6, 1860 election of another president, Abraham Lincoln.

Virginia isn't alone. Residents in at least 30 states have started petitions to secede or break away from the United States. Texas, Louisiana and Florida have apparently gained the most signatures. The petitions reportedly need at least 25,000 signatures before they will be recognized by the president. Texas and Louisiana reportedly have more than that. No word from the White House.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an early GOP candidate for president, weighed in on the controversy Tuesday. "Gov. [Rick] Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it," his press secretary Catherine Frazier wrote in a statement to the Dallas Morning News. "But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government."

The Virginia petition reads as follows:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

Peacefully grant the State of Virginia to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

As the founding fathers of the United States of America made clear in the Declaration of Independence in 1776:

"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 of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government..."

What do you think about some Virginians signing on to the idea of seceding from the union? Is it an overreaction to the results of last week's presidential election results? Weigh in.