I like this opening:
High above the rugged border, an unmanned Predator B drone equipped with night-vision cameras and cloud-piercing radar scanned the landscape for signs of smugglers, illegal immigrants or terrorists…
The beefed-up border security is not taking place along America’s chaotic southern border – riven by drug smuggling, gun running and illegal immigration – but, rather, its traditionally boring northern boundary with Canada.
Wow, that Napolitano gal doesn’t waste any time. Seems like only yesterday that an unmanned drone on the 49th Parallel meant Nelson Eddy doing the “Indian Love Call.” I’m not sure how it’s going to affect Derby Line/Stansted, where the Vermont/Quebec border runs through the middle of the municipal library, but maybe they can have the Predator hovering over the Fiction A-M shelves.
[UPDATE: Re this passage…
“One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feeling among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border,” Napolitano told a conference in Washington.
“In other words, we shouldn’t go light on one and heavy on the other.”
A reader observes:
It’s apparently just as politically incorrect under the new regime to profile countries as it is to profile individuals.]