Philip Dine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers 'Urban legend of "North American Union" feeds on fears'. That appears to be the original title, it doesn't appear to have been printed in his own paper, and it's accompanied by a handy chart listing other "urban legends". The latter are obvious ones, such as the perennial favorite about a rebate from Microsoft. (They use Snopes.com as a source for those "legends", despite that site not being known for their accuracy or ability to admit their mistakes.)

While Dine does provide the anti-NAU side, and he isn't as much an apologist as Michael Medved, and it's good to see the MSM at least mentioning the scheme, the tone of the article is dismissive. It starts like this:

Forget conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, black helicopters, Sept. 11, 2001. This is the big one.

There's a summary of the rest from Cliff Kincaid:

On another front, White House spokesman Tony Snow calls the North American Union (NAU) a "myth," despite the abundant evidence of White House involvement in the development of a North American identification card and security strategy. This is how the subject of national sovereignty gets marginalized and dismissed. In this case, our "adversary press" meekly accepts the White House line. Echoing Snow, Philip Dine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has written an article saying the NAU is based on an Internet "rumor" with a "few grains of truth" that has led people to "an unsubstantiated conclusion." It is apparent that he didn't attend the "North American Law" conference which I covered, featuring wide-ranging discussions on how the North American Free Trade Agreement is leading to the integration of the economic, legal and political systems of the U.S, Canada and Mexico.

There are more things the "debunkers" fail to mention here.

In the article, other "debunkers" are:

"There is absolutely no U.S. government plan for a NAFTA Superhighway of any sort," said David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a powerful member of committees that would authorize and pay for a North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway if one were being planned, dismissed the notion as "unfounded theories" with "no credence."

...Matt Englehart, spokesman for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, said the North American partnership "is absolutely not a precursor" to a loss of American sovereignty...

Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University political scientist who specializes in conspiracy theories, said a major theme long has been "that schemes are being hatched to destroy American sovereignty."

"The only thing that's new here is that it appears in the guise of a North American Union," he said. "Previously it appeared in the guise of U.N. domination. I think whatever appeal this has may derive from the fact that there are pre-existing concerns about trade that have been around since the creation of NAFTA, and even more strongly the immigration issue in the sense of border security. So in a way it becomes an issue onto which all kinds of anxieties and concerns can be projected."

Doug Thomas, professor of communications, technology and culture at the University of Southern California, said the advent of the Internet has made conspiracy theories widely available.

"It's the speed and the distribution," he said. "People are able to join in and flush them out a little quicker, so everybody can add a piece to the puzzle."

Well if two Commerce Department officials and two quite possibly corrupt academics say it ain't so, it ain't so. But, as a capper, Robert Pastor, the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as "the father of the NAU" says:

On one recent day alone, Pastor said, he received 100 e-mails on the topic. "They get turned on by [CNN's] Lou Dobbs and [Fox's] Bill O'Reilly, who are fearful that Mexicans and Canadians are about to take over our country," Pastor said, adding that such claims are a product of "the xenophobic or frightened right wing of America that is afraid of immigration and globalization."