TChris wrote yesterday about the Department of Homeland Security's budget crunch. Here are some more details, from the Wall Street Journal(paid subscription required):

The year-old Department of Homeland Security is declaring a hiring freeze at two of its front-line units because of a potential $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
A third front-line unit, the Citizenship and Immigration Service, also has a hiring freeze in effect because of an unrelated shortfall in fee assessments.

The timing of the news couldn't be worse for the Bush administration. Speaking this week before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, known as the 9/11 commission, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke raised serious questions about the administration's security efforts against al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, Democrats have been criticizing the department, which was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, for failing to have a comprehensive staffing strategy to secure the borders.

Democrats charge that the Homeland Security department shifted hundreds of agents from the southern border -- considered especially vulnerable to a terrorist attack -- to the U.S.-Canada border in order to meet new requirements set by the Patriot Act and the Border Security Act....The worst border problems in the country at the moment are in Arizona. Robert C. Bonner, the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, last month described the border security situation in Arizona, as a "complete mess."