Editorials

The Alabama Senate does not have (or will not take) the time to pass legislation that will improve the lives of our citizens, but it has the time (or takes the time) to pass a resolution denouncing a movement that does not exist and a highway that no one plans to build.

Incredibly, the Senate paused recently to pass a resolution denouncing a "foreign consortium … controlled by foreign management" that is working to create a "North American Union" that will strip these countries of their independence. Evidence of this diabolical plot is the building of a "NAFTA Superhighway" that will link the countries and achieve what the conspirators want to achieve.

Where did the senators who sponsored this resolution learn about this dastardly undertaking? The John Birch Society.

Back in the '60s, members of the Birch Society were searching across America to find communists and other one-world government folks so they could expose them to the glare of public condemnation. Their greatest catch? None other than President Dwight Eisenhower, whom the Birch Society's leader described as "a dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy."

So off-the-wall were the Birchers that true conservatives denounced them. By the 1980s they were marginalized and bitter.

Apparently, now they are trying to return to some sort of former glory, and the Alabama Senate is providing assistance.

Even though this "plot" has been discounted by the White House, the urban legend debunker snopes.com and the governor of Texas — through whose state the subversive "superhighway" would run — the conspiracy theorists figure that such denunciations are more evidence of the power of the plotters.

Reason cannot win.

Thus, maybe it is appropriate that the Alabama Senate spend time on something that's this ridiculous. Since our senators have spent so little time on the business of the state, they had to do something to while away the unproductive hours. And look at what they chose.