Arne, you got me. The only problem is that you've completely missed the more serious meaning of the song. My life won't be worth a plug nickel after I tell this story, but, jeesh, I just got to tell it. You see I was raised near an airbase in West Texas, a bomber base. We all heard the story of how the Air Force was concerned about the safety of the nuclear weapons on their aircraft after a couple of hushed-up accidents. It seems every now and then the bombs just fell out of the plane when they weren't supposed to. Damned dangerous business. The brink of WWIII.

The big brains were called in to fix the problem and added every failsafe they could think of to keep the bombs in the planes. Then one of the non-coms organizing the heavy lifting for the brains asked a question that froze the blood in their veins: "what happens if all that fancy gear don't work?" At the non-com's suggestion they added one last safety device - a strong piece of rope to tie the bombs to the plane.

Now this was all common knowledge amoung the bomber pilots. As a matter of fact, they began to refer to their bomb missions as "going to hang 'em high" after the release of a Clint Eastwood movie.

So you see, this song isn't about lynching or vigilantes or anything like that. "All the rope in Texas" is a code word that any Texas including the president would know. Toby Keith is egging the president to use the US nuclear arsenal to seek gobal domination! Today the Middle East, tomorrow the world!

It's all true, the bombers, the rope (later steel cable, but hemp in its first incarnation), the base in Texas, all of it I promise. Except for the part about the song and the global domination is ridiculous, of course. There's a simplier answer, one several people have offered because it's obvious to everyone but you. You see you can't ignore Occam's Razor and use spurious correlations to reach a conclusion just because you want it to be true.

BTW, MR. Keith is from Oklahoma.