It was only a small item in The Lincoln Journal-Star. It  concerned an idea hatched by a Nebraska state senator named Paul Schumacher, who represents a district in what Nebraskans call the Unicameral in and around the city of Columbus, the county seat of Platte County. Somewhere north of 32,000 people live in Platte County, and about 95 percent of them are white. Anyway, if you follow it closely, Schumacher’s notion winds upward through the levels of our politics. Ultimately, it leads to a perilous place, and our arrival there as a self-governing republic is perilously imminent.