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Oh my God. The terrorists have won. Kids who are on school trips are exempt from the new strict passport rules for US citizens reentering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, or the Caribbean.

The new passport requirements are expected to take effect as soon as January 2008. But under the expected announcement, children aged 15 or younger with parental consent will be allowed to cross the borders at land and sea entry points with a certified copy of their birth certificates rather than passports.

Children aged 16 through 18 traveling with school, religious, cultural or athletic groups and under adult supervision will also be allowed to travel with only their birth certificates.

Where is Bill O'Reilly? Where is Rush Limbaugh? Where is the indignation? Sure, it's great that nice Christian church groups can go help little brown people in Mexico or go blow their minds on french fries served with mayonnaise in Canada, but at some point a Muslim school group is going to want to visit Canada to check out a hockey game or some poutine. (Which, by the by, is awesome.) And then what? We're going to let these people import hormone-crazed, impressionable Muslim kids into the United States to open Al-Qaeda training camps in our suburbs? We're just going to let the terrorists waltz right through our borders with some falsified birth certificate and bombs strapped to their chests? TO THE FALLOUT SHELTERS.

I can see the point of tightening up border security and requiring passports, but it all seems kind of stupid when there are barren, security-less areas of the Canadian border for people to waltz right through without being checked at all. It's only a matter of time before the right-wing nut jobs ship a perfectly fine Muslim/Mexican school group off to Gitmo because they don't trust somebody's birth certificate.