Jonah Goldberg busts out with this comment:

[even warmongers] have no desire to make Chad or Afghanistan or Israel or any place on the globe an American colony or — heaven forbid — a 51st state (though, personally, I do have my eye on some Canadian real estate).

Just days after Colby Cosh says:

No, actually I think Albertans are stupid: why else are we still in Confederation? In Liberal Canada there are all of two provinces which are net contributors to the union: one of them, Ontario, gets permanent political dominance in exchange for its acquiescence. Our own reward can be seen above: we're the hewers of wheat (hewers??) and drawers of oil who should know their place. Like the literal scapegoat of old we're a "source of pollution." We should have gone a long time ago. The Constitution allows for it, and Albertans in fact favour it. If our chickenshit domestic political leaders didn't think it would limit their career opportunities, they'd be doing the right thing and saying "Screw you forever" to a country that tolerates us because it needs somebody to steal from.

Push it now! We can't get Alberta into the union before the '02 elections, but if we hurry we can make it for the '04. And Texas won't object, since Alberta is 255,303 sq. miles while Texas is 261,914 sq. miles.