Why am I even in the same COUNTRY as Alabama?

Why am I even in the same COUNTRY as Alabama?

That Baja Canada map is looking better all the time, even though Iowa doesn't get to be a province:

"It's right there in black and white in the Alabama state constitution. Language providing for segregated schools, authorizing poll taxes, and stating there is no right to public education - a 1956 move allowing the state to close public schools if the feds integrated them.

They voted Tuesday in Alabama to get rid of that Jim Crow language. And it's headed for a recount. Right now, there's a thin majority to keep the segregationist language."

More on this from Ron Gunzberger at Politics1:

"Amendment 2 on Tuesday's ballot proposed cleaning up the state constitution by removing some long-unenforced segregationist provisions that mandated separate-but-equal segregated schools, authorized unconstitutional poll taxes to bar blacks from voting, and specified that Alabamians have no constitutional right to public education (giving the state the power to deny funding to any integrated schools). Governor Bob Riley (R) supported the amendment. On the other side was Riley's likely 2006 primary opponent: ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore. Moore -- who touts himself as "The Ten Commandments Judge" -- led the opposition to the repeal, arguing it could open the door to tax hikes in order to improve the state's public school system. The Alabama Christian Coalition also opposed the amendment, explaining that the group wanted "to ensure that reckless trial lawyers and activist judges will not be able to open the floodgates to increase taxes and that private, Christian, parochial and home-school families will be protected." The "tax hike" argument appears to be a red herring, however, as the Alabama Supreme Court already ruled in 1993 that the "no constitutional right to public education" provision was unconstitutional under the US Constitution. Out of 1.4 million votes cast statewide, Amendment 2 appears to have lost by 2,500 votes. However, the state will conduct an automatic recount."