Good Luck DrPhil, hope you do well!
Castmaster I have crossed the border a ton of times and not one time can I ever recall being asked if I had been arrested. You are right about the honest part though had a few custom agents asked some of the wall question just to see my response.
The passport for driving into the US from either Mexico or Canada goes into effect Jan 1 2008 as of right this moment. Air travel was manditory as this past January. This whole passport deal was the US doing and not by the Canadian or Mexican goverment.
I've had a couple problems with travel to and from in the past but nothing major, biggest problem I had was coming back into the US because I didn't have a birth certificate only a driver license.
Whopper