And now back to the war at home... Right on time for a revisit of our favourite (note English spelling!) post-Iraq storyline.

I loved Sunday's strip, but tell Mike Doonesbury to forget those TV news "shows" and watch PBS news! Just some friendly advice from a 78-year-old neighbor and fan.

Garry, today's cartoon captures exactly what I've been seeing in TV "news." As for my feelings, I now have a barf bucket sitting beside my chair. Thanks.

Re NEVER TAKEN: It should also be noted that on May 26, 1865 the Confederate commander in Texas, General Kirby Smith, formally surrendered the 43,000 Confederate soldiers in Texas to Union General Edward Canby. Shortly thereafter Smith signed formal surrender papers, thus ending formal Confederate resistence in Texas. To claim that Texas "never surrendered" is a bit like someone claiming that because Admiral Donitz was a military leader and not the civilian head of government, that Germany never surrendered; in either case, the end result was the same and further resistence would only have resutled in greater destruction of the defeated side.

The Sell Texas website fits in well with this past week's secession theme. There may be one state that wants to leave the union, but there are 49 that would love to give it the boot. And for good reasons.

I know why the baboons in a Dutch zoo are so depressed. They realized that Doonesbury was taking the month off!

There has been an active secessionist sentiment here in Western Canada for a generation or more. A new twist on these ideas and one which might bring them to fruition would be an alliance involving Texas and the other States bordering the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Mountains. Alberta and Saskatchewan have a lot of geographical and political similarities to Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado. Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Economically they should have no problem surviving in a political union with their vast oil and potash production and near monopoly in cattle and cereal grains. Perhaps the secessionists of Texas, if they are really serious, would be wise to explore this alternative.

I am native Texan, for many generations, and very politically conservative. You nailed it, spot on. Keep the Texas thing going.

Why not just give Texas back to Mexico? Wouldn't that settle the illegal immigration issue?

I'm enjoying the Texas strips now more than the first time. I think secessionist Texans would appreciate a T-shirt I saw in Gettysburg yesterday. It said, "If at first you don't secede, try, try again!"

I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate your Texas secession strips. I have friends in Texas who seem to be great, intelligent people until they wax political. Then you'd think they suffered head injuries and became functional morons. If they are ticked off it means the day wasn't wasted. Keep up the fine work.

It should be noted that Texas was never taken by Union forces, and never surrendered after the war. It simply requested readmission to the Union. Texas could do this because of its size and its critical location across traveler-friendly routes to the west.

With the Texas secession petition flashback series, the thing that rarely gets mentioned is that this was a petition to the White House -- as if the President of the United States has the authority to grant a petition to secede. How about we petition the Texas Board of Education to tighten up their civics class requirements?

Flashback again? What, did you take the whole summer off?

Sorry to disappoint, but Texans cannot secede. They already did, and lost, along with the rest of the slave states. Any supposed agreement they had previously is thereby moot.

The real reason it's too late for Texas secession (awesome as it would be) is Battleground Texas, formed to take advantage of the demographic and generational shifts there and turn Texas Blue. It has recruited more than 2,000 local volunteers to get out the vote. The plan includes encouraging legal immigrants to become citizens, citizens to register and get ID, and everybody to show up at the polls. Also, Texas goes straight back on the preclearance list for its current voter suppression shenanigans. For true hilarity, wait for the northern part of Texas to try to secede when the border area is even more firmly Blue than it is now. Plus we get to keep Austin weird.

Timeless genius that he is, could Mr. Trudeau please figure out a way to turn Texas into an all-inclusive Bush compound, where the only guests would be the reprobate Dick Cheney and the equally heinous Jerry Jones?

Being tired of ever increasing government intrusion, if Texas did break away I'd move there! But only providing that no one from New York or California was allowed to immigrate. Mexicans I would welcome. After all, Texas was stolen from them in the first place, and they have a tremendous work ethic!

Thanks to Garry for many years of great political satire!!!

As Jeff/Sorkh Razil and Stephen Colbert/Stephen Colbert both demonstrate, all of our current politics can be summed up in this Douglas Adams quotation: "One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so – but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it."