That wall walked right up to me and bumped me. Bad, bad wall!

As you've probably heard, the waiting time for passport applications has exploded to three months or more. The reason, of course, is that the government promulgated new regulations requiring all citizens returning from trips to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and other places to present passports or be barred re-entry to the country. The State Department knew about this two years in advance, and any idiot should have foreseen there would be a large surge of passport applications. Foreseen or not, it appears no one prepared for the surge and, hence, the long waits for applicants.

However, in true Bush form, the government can't even admit to error in this case. Who's to blame for this? Not the government, of course. It's the American people. From an editorial in today's NY Times:

The department blames the delays on the eagerness of Americans to prepare for the new rules by applying to obtain passports even when they had no imminent travel plans. In other words, ordinary citizens were so responsible that they caught the State Department off-guard. Such good citizenship also doesn’t come cheap. Standard processing fees for an adult are $97. Expediting the application runs an extra $60 per person and, even with the hefty rush charge, it still takes two to three weeks.