the North American Union

Today I learned that State Senator Karen Johnson (R-Mesa) believes President Bush has secret plans to merge the US with Canada and Mexico by 2010, and he won't involve Congress until it's a done deal. She's apparently not the only one because there's a not-up-to-standards Wikipedia page about it, too.

Since I'm not used to seeing conspiracy theories in the newspaper, or more accurately, articles about politicians who believe them, I wondered about the source. Capitol Media Services has an address in Maryland, but in Arizona, it appears to be one guy: Howard Fischer (scroll down), who covers politics. Since he's written a bunch of articles (including the third link I put here) for papers all over Arizona, the only reason I hadn't heard of him or Capitol Media Services before is that I'm incredibly unobservant unless I'm paying attention, in which case I can learn things like Mr. Fischer goes by 'Howie' and uses a hotmail account, but probably only for published lists of media contacts.

Anyway, various commenters on the Star website are worrying seriously about merging with Mexico, but they're not seeing the bigger picture: the sooner we form a world government, the sooner the space aliens will decide we're civilized enough to visit.