Jaunted

Wow, reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina? Really? C'mon now. Back in June the government eased new passport rules with Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean, allowing travelers to return by air without a passport through September and travel to these countries by sea or land through 2009, sans passport.

Add to that a quick guide we put together to illustrate How To Score A U.S. Passport And Beat The Backlog--didn't that help? Furthermore, we haven't heard many travelers complaining since the passport rules were loosened.

Still there is a huge passport backlog because a bunch of passport procrastinators out there--you know who you are--didn't send their passport applications in until the last minute back in January. Once some of these folks started missing their winter trips to Bermuda and the like, because the airlines would not let them on the plane without a valid passport, all hell broke loose.

Could Lantos's outrage really be fueled by the fact that his phone is ringing off the hook with callers who want a passport yesterday and want him to do something about it? Once people actually started bothering their local representative, as we suggested, maybe passports were getting churned out a bit faster but local representative offices were feeling overworked. Of course this is all a guess, but you know representative offices don't actually want to be burdened with too much work for their constituents--right?

Seriously Tom Lantos, worse than the Katrina response? Please tell us you didn't say that. CNN got the quote wrong, right?

[Photo: Shiny Things]

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