I think it's time we took another look at statehood for Alaska, Texas, Puerto Rico and Samoa.

Texas is the really big one. They've been talking about seceding from the union anyway, or at least their governor, Rick Perry, has been. When we take a look at what Texas has given us, what do we have?

Fort Hood. Waco. Dubya. LBJ. Charles Whitman, who played sniper from that tower. I don't mean that every Texan is an undesirable; I'm sure there are some nice people from Texas. But Little Brudder spent some time in Texas, working for a chemicals company whose name you'd recognize.

At a family get-together, he announced that everyone who went to the University of Texas was either a whore or a football player. My cousin, who works as editor for a newspaper in Brownsville, commented that he was dating a girl who had just earned a degree at UT. When Little Brudder turned to him and said, "Yeah? What position did she play?" he laughed and said, "No, she's a whore. I said I was dating her!"

When the Texans don't stand up for Texas, that says something, doesn't it? Cousin Al says that in Texas schools, they teach every student that the Alamo was a great military victory, and that's why Dubya ended up in two unwinnable wars.

Texas gets a lot more money from the federal treasury than they pay in taxes. It's time to cut them loose.

President Obama went to Alaska, set down at Elmensdorf Air Force Base. The new governor of Texas, no, not the one who accused him of pallin' around with terrorists, but the guy who's finishing out her term, decided to snub Obama, and snub the troops as well. Alaska has a lot of oil, and they haven't paid enough taxes over the years to begin to pay us back for what Seward paid Russia for the state. I'm not suggesting that we cut them loose. Just demote them from state to, uh, I don't know whether we should call it a territory or a refrigerator. Maybe we could just rename it Ding Dong School, and send Miss Marion up there to run things.

Puerto Rico, on the other hand, has been part of the US for a long time, and they are not only strongly patriotic, but they have a world class Rum industry. Those of us in Lancaster know that Puerto Ricans are good citizens. It's time we stopped treating them like second-class citizens. And the folks in the District of Columbia have been complaining that they don't have representation in Congress as well. Let's grant statehood to Puerto Rico, and annex the District to Puerto Rico.

And then there's Samoa. We've had 49 American states and 1 Polynesian state for half a century, and it's worked out pretty well. Hawaii is a really popular tourist location, and I suspect Samoa would be, too, if we granted them statehood. And by giving Puerto Rico and Samoa statehood at the same time that we boot out Texas and demote Alaska, we could continue to use our present 50-star flags.

Yeah, it sounds absurd on the face of it - but once the idea soaks in, it grows on you. Think about it for a day or two before you decide. I think you'll agree - we need 50 states, but not these 50 states.