Did you hear about the poor American economist who was stopped and questioned by a Canadian border official?

It was on Page 3 of Friday's Toronto Star. The top advisor to Hillary Clinton complained to a luncheon crowd that included business people, U.S. and Canadian government officials and journalists, that he was subjected to an intensive interrogation about who he was, what he was going to say, and what group he was addressing.

Boy, those are some really tough questions. The nerve of our officials questioning the former national economic advisor to President Bill Clinton.

I guess our border security didn't get the memo about how important this stuffed shirt really was.

Frankly, we find this whining a little rich coming from a citizen of the same country that barred Yusuf Islam (better known as Cat Stevens, the singer  who wrote the song Peace Train) from flying into Washington because he was a "national security threat."

Later, when he was asked by reporters about his traumatic incident and having to "answer questions in more detail that he had ever experienced in numerous trips to Canada and other countries," he clammed up.

Maybe he realized what a hypocrite he was being. After all, it's his country that is demanding that Canada tighten up its border security. It's the United States that is now making us all carry passports when we travel back and forth between the two countries.

It's the United States Department of Homeland Security that has been accused of racial profiling and detaining hundreds of its own citizens at the Canada-U.S. border just because of the colour of their skin.

So you'll forgive me if I have absolutely no sympathy for Mr. Gene Sperling and his complaints about having to answer a few questions about the purpose of his visit. He's just experienced what thousands of regular citizens, both Canadian and American, have to put up with on a daily basis.

Mr. Sperling back-pedaled a bit with reporters later, saying it was probably just an overzealous Canadian border official.

"There are a lot of people who are in a lot of jobs in the United States and Canada - civil servants, people trying to do their jobs," he said. "People have good days and they have bad days."

You want over-zealous security people having a bad day?

Look no further than Page B3 in the same issue where we can read about the poor woman from Texas who was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers before she could board an airplane.

American airport security boobs apparently think nipples are dangerous weapons.

Mandi Hamlin was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent with a handheld detector that beeped when the female agent passed it in front of her chest.

Hamlin says, when she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings, the agent called over her male colleagues, who said she would have to remove the jewellery.

The Star report said Hamlin told security that she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewellery was out, she said. She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

Crying, she informed the officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, so the officer gave a pair to her and she managed to remove the concealed weapon attached to her nipple.

She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

If Mr. Sperling wants to complain about issues involved in crossing the Canada-U.S. border, he needs to get at the end of a very, very, long line. And he also needs to realize that any tightening of border crossing protocols have come at the behest of his own paranoid and largely incompetent government.