We've been getting most of our news from Al Jazeera or EuroNews lately, mostly because Jon Stewart is still off the air due to the WGA strike, Keith Olbermann has been on vacation for the last week (and we can't STAND Alison Stewart), and the CNN World news-readers scare the holy hell out of us.

Seriously. There's this one zombie lady from Russia or somewhere and then this hideously old man who looks 95% dead - I'm wondering if the zombie lady is slowly sucking the life from him. Like when he started he was dashing and handsome and in his mid-thirties - now he looks about eighty. Either way, the two of them are the worst anchor-people ever.

Anyway, this week the big news was the inclusion of nine countries into the European Union's borderless Schengen zone. One can now travel between the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden without a passport. Heck, without a border guard either!

Then there's the United States. On the same day as the pomp and ceremony of border openings in Europe, Congress delayed a requirement that people entering the US from Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean show a passport when arriving by land or sea until at least June of 2009.

After that there'll be no more going to Canada with just a drivers' license.

Same with Mexico.

Of course, the Department of Homeland Security wanted to require passports starting in June of 2008.

Anyone else think it's just amazing that while the United States is slowly tightening its borders the EU is opening theirs?

Is the US crazy?

Is the EU?

Because one of the two certainly is, but I don't know which ...