Highway to the North American Union

A battle between Texas and the Bush administration is brewing over construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor after the state legislature passed a two-year moratorium. The Texas House passed HB1892 Wednesday after the Senate last week approved an earlier version of the moratorium on a project some critics see as part of a "NAFTA superhighway" system and ties with Canada and Mexico that threaten U.S. sovereignty. The bill has been sent to Gov. Rick Perry for signature by May 14, but it passed with veto-proof margins of 27-4 in the Senate and 139-1 in the House. The Bush administration appears determined to fight the moratorium.

FHWA Chief Counsel James D. Ray wrote a four-page letter to Michael Behrens, executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, threatening the loss of federal highway funds if the legislature were to pass a two-year moratorium of the public-private partnership financed by Cintra, an investment consortium in Spain. TTC-35, the nation's first NAFTA superhighway, is a four-football-field wide car-truck-train-pipeline toll road the Texas Department of Transportation plans to build parallel to Interstate 35 from Laredo, Texas, to the Texas-Oklahoma border south of Oklahoma City.

• JJ Commentary: This is a key part of the New World (Dis)Order strategy to create a North American Union similar to the European Union.