Seen in the Wall Street Journal:
Mowing the grass between the U.S. and Canada, though, doesn’t weigh heavily in the arena of border security. With the collapse of its immigration overhaul, the Bush administration is promising to keep on spending billions for guards, fences, radar towers and robot airplanes. The focus is on the dry expanses of the Mexican border, where weed whacking isn’t the main issue.
Meanwhile, the Boundary Commission — whose officials think it’s probably the smallest and poorest independent agency in the federal government — is still working with the maps it drew up in 1937. It often has trouble finding the Canadian border, much less mowing it.
“They talk about securing the border, well, nobody ever came to talk to us,” Mr. Hipsley said. He circled around Lake Memphremagog, just west of Beebe Plain, turned north up a dirt road and stopped at a border gate with a rusty padlock on it. “That’s what we don’t understand. What could be the most basic thing you’d think of? How can you protect it if you can’t see it?”
The Boundary Commission charged with keeping clear a 20 foot wide vista along the U.S.-Canada border, and the article reports that the 12-position organization is running a few hundred miles behind schedule on its upkeep.
Good thing the Canadians are our friends, eh?