Congress Debating National Driver's License Rules

hamelis writes "The NYT [FRR: bugmenot]reporting on Congress' attempt to set national standards for issuing driver's licenses. The Secretary of Homeland Security could require licenses to contain fingerprints or retinal scans, and while states are not required to cooperate, if your license doesn't conform to federal standards, you can be denied "access to planes, trains and other modes of transportation." Additionally, the House version would require states to keep all license data in a linked database for quick access, and calls for "an integrated network of screening points that includes the nation's border security system, transportation system and critical infrastructure facilities." How is this functionally different from a national ID card?"

Comments

Re:Sad news... a sick counter-balance...

[davidsyes]

When a bomber or some radical FRAGS (from mere threatening whisper to outright ejection from corporeal existence) corrupt members of government, corporation, or capacity, maybe we should look the other way, or egg them on to be VERY, VERY selective and surgical about who they strike.

After all, most of us civilians NO LONGER hold a vote power at the national election level. Our votes have been negotiated, bought, and sold by corporations, rich, and in-the-club investors and credits/favors exchangers.

For terrorists to attack the common person who effectively is national-vote neutered or who faces being arrested, tortured or shot by-- a corrupt oligarchy, monarchy, theocracy or plutocracy pretending to heed the will of the people-- from voicing her/his conscience is to be a waste of limited resources. Just as military strikes aim to be surgical, terrorists could gain a SHIT LOAD of currency by minding whom they go after. Beheading employees is NOT the answer-- IF that employee is some low-level individual. However, insurgents, counter-insurgents, spies, spooks, attaches, and dignitarys carrying pouches, microdots, bugs and chips up their butts, or verbally passing high-level tactical, political, or similar messages are part of the "get-caught-and-you-COULD-die" game of spying. That IS PART OF THE GAME, and they SHOULD accept it and live with it, or not be part of that game. Terrorists' targetting of civilians only undermines their effectiveness because they REAL targets they hope to make capitulate have what WE, the PEOPLE, DON'T have:

Security, body guards, protection, isolation, intel, weapons, frequently-changing-schedules...

For saying this (which obviously is NOT classified, but IS spoken with PASSION, I guess I can look forward to MY conforming license to be "pending" indefinitely, hehhe...

WHEW, that was ONE side of the scale...

On the OTHER hand, (being I'm a Libra and always interested in counterbalancing things), for us civilians to BE (temporarily, but no longer) legit targets, we HAVE to have returned to us the duty and responsibility of being able to FIRE those corrupt C*$@suckers who put us in these precarious situations. (We need to change our mass-consumption habits, too, for this to work...) We need to shift the targetting back UPON ourselves so that we instantly don't want to be randomly chosen targets "going into the disintegration chamber", if you will. Once WE truly, TRULY taste being targetted until we MAKE our so-called "leaders" do OUR bidding instead of the other way around, THEN, we'll see terrorists (not the whacked out ones hating ALL 'merikuns, but mainly those who hate us for making incursions into their markets--EVEN if they let in, say, Japan, or China, or India, or Australia, but discriminate against the U.S. of A...) chill out, maybe because we give them room. If their kids want MTV, Coke, Jordache, and other crap, LET THEM get it AFTER the wonky terrorists/hyper-fundamentalists-gone-overboard, or the super extremists have died off naturally (and I mean NO predators or raprots, umm, raptors seeking them out in the night). I imagine if we lost our big eyes in the sky and rapid mobility, thereby putting us on somewhat equal terms, the US deathcount in Iraq would be more in line with the monthly averages in Vietnam, since surgical striking and laser beams were not NEARLy as accurate as today, and all that "tech" is giving US, the US a helluva tactical and strategic advantage that effectively makes soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen feel "safer" from mortal wounding...)

Oh, hell, I digressed again... Motor Voter....

Maybe the Motor-Voter thing should be MANDATORY, effectively IMMEDIATELY and who GIVES a goddamn what republicans or opponents to MV want. This could prevent the bullshit committed by georgy-porgy and jeb-jethro:

-Citizens (or if that's too sticky, VOTE-ELEGIBLE persons) get a license of one color, consistent across state lines
-non-vote-elegible motorists get a DL of ANOTHER color, consistent across st