Passport Processing Pileup.

Here's one of those stories about how policy initiatives translate into real work on the front lines: At a press conference yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Maura Harty said that with the new border security initiative requiring many people to have passports to travel to Canada and Mexico, the passport processing workload is expected to increase dramatically. The Bureau of Consular Affairs processed 8.8 million passport applications in 2004. They're projecting 10.5 million for this year, 12 million in 2006, 14 million in 2007, and 17 million in 2008. In a cringe-inducing effort to be hip, Harty talked up the agency's current efforts to process expedited passport applications, saying, "You can turn that bad boy around in some cases in as short as a day."