Reuters: US tightens security on New England-Canada border

[Eugene]

US tightens security on New England-Canada border
Wed May 31, 2006 2:10pm ET

By Jason Szep

DERBY LINE, Vermont (Reuters) - The United States has tightened security with Canada
in its northeast corner to the dismay of businesses and residents accustomed to crossing
the world's longest undefended border with little more than a wave of a hand or a flash
of a driver's license.

Since last week, most travelers from Canada are being required to show identification and
submit to background checks at U.S. border posts in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said
Ted Woo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Boston.

"It's such a shock to all of us here," said Florence Joyal, 68, who works the cash register
in a general store in the Vermont village of Derby Line, whose Main Street leads straight
into the Canadian province of Quebec.

<snip>

The tougher screening was confined to New England and did not represent new U.S. policy,
said Woo.

<snip>

Full article: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-31T180953Z_01_N303162_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-CANADA.xml

I'll sleep better at night knowing that the New England homeland is secured against the Canadian threat. /sarcasm

[niyad]

1. the first step in sealing off our northern border as well. what a crock.

to those who think that isolating us is a good idea, I remind you of the Berlin Wall.

[yellowcanine]

3. Robert Frost had something to say about this.

MENDING WALL
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

[yellowcanine]

2. Anything to keep us from getting overrun by Canadians saying "eh"

[MADem]

7. The end of the Molson's run as we know it....the bastards!!! n/t

[bdamomma]

4. OMG THIS IS JUST SICK

they are isolating everyone from us, what's next? installing checkpoints and asking us for our papers.

We have a very sick sick man in office.

[niyad]

5. I was going to point out that we haven't had a free and democratic

society since * stole office, but then you took that line out.

[woodsprite]

6. They're doing a trial run. n/t

[mainegreen]

8. Totally pointless.

The border with Canada in New England couldn't be secured if we tried. Have the people in charge even been up here? It's all forests and mountains, with almost no people! How do you monitor a border if you can't see the ground from the air? If your horizon is no more than 100 yards in any direction on the ground at best? If the nearest paved road is a hundred miles away? You could move an entire platoon into our woods and park them there for months and no one would be the wiser. When was the last time these bozos looked at a map of Maine? It's almost as if our state was designed to be as hard to secure as possible, what with the 2000 miles of inlets, harbors, fjords, islands and coastline. Not to mention thousands and thousands of acres of totally uninhabited woods criss-crossed by unpatrolled trails.

Fucking - Morons.

[Up2Late]

9. Just another illustration of the power of ridicule by "The Daily Show"!!!

The Daily Show reported this border weakness FIRST! (and hilariously)

Here's the video: <http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=68863>

<http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/jason_jones/index.jhtml>