Slashdot Mirror
California Edges Toward Joining Real ID Revolt
The Department of Homeland Security's Real ID program has a real challenge on its hands from California. DHS had said it will only grant extensions from the Real ID rules taking effect on May 11 to states that apply by March 31 and promise to implement Real ID by 2010. California requested an extension but would not make the latter promise. DHS buckled and said, in effect, "Good enough." Perhaps they realized that trying to slap giant California around is qualitatively different than doing the same to New Hampshire. In another crack in the wall. DHS has granted Montana a waiver it explicitly did not ask for. From Wired: "For a short moment Thursday, millions of Californians were in danger of facing pat-downs at the airport and being blocked from federal buildings come May 11... DHS had said before Thursday it won't grant Real ID extensions to states who don't commit to implementing the rules in the future. That meant Tuesday's letter looked like enough to join California to the small rebellion against the Real ID rules. For Californians that would mean enduring the same fate facing citizens of South Carolina, Maine, Montana, and New Hampshire... [A]fter Threat Level provided Homeland Security spokesman Laura Keehner with the letter, Keehner said California's commitment to thinking about commitment is good enough."
Borodin: Do you think they will let me live in Montana?
Capt. Ramius: I would think they'll let you live wherever you want.
Borodin: Good. Then I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman, and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pick-up truck, or umm... possibly even...a recreational vehicle, and drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Capt. Ramius: Oh yes.
Borodin: No papers?
Capt. Ramius: No papers. State-to-state.
I wish states would step up and grow a pair more often. It's about time the states remembered their place in our system of checks and balances.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Congress won't defend the Constitution or Rule of Law anymore. The Supreme Court has been compromised.
Perhaps the states are our last hope. If California, New York, and just a few of the other big states say no to all the nonsense, the federal government shall have to back down or stage a coup.
It would be great to see them band together and take a very strong, pro-Constitutionalist stance on RealID, as well as the other recent intrusions on states' rights (I mean it in the Constitutional sense, not the neo-con sense).
For instance, the deployment of National Guard overseas at the expense of Civil Defense; the National Guard units belong to their respective states and actually answer to the governors, not the President. Or take the Medical Marijuana initiatives that passed all around the country in 2006 and which the Federal Government has been trying to countermand--it's not my issue but the states have the right under the Constitution to regulate such matters within their own borders.
Maybe, just maybe, if the states lead the way Congress will grow a pair.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The same might be said for Europe, and currently for the UK who also have a fetish for wanting a "super" biometric ID cards and, more importantly, the all-knowing database behind it. Want to buy something in a store with cash, show us your ID card first. Did you vote for the wrong party, your ID is cancelled and you become a non-person, unable to get state benefits / pension / health-care.
The governments are very keen on using the pretext of immigration for ID cards etc., but it is they that deliberately open the borders to let anyone in, it is a problem they can control at an instant at no cost. Having people associate proving ID with controlling immigration is a real bonus.
No, the real reason behind having the ID system is that the government wants to know about YOU, they don't care about the immigrants. Freedom is rapidly dying as people forget (or more likely never taught) what WW2 was all about.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
States lost a lot of their rights when they permitted people to choose Senators and ever since then the Federal Government has run over the states...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's fairly well known in the UK that the ID card is just a political front for MI5 and the police force's desire to build a fingerprint database of everybody in the country. Nobody wants the cards, they just want to work around the recently passed laws that prohibited them from collecting DNA and fingerprints of people who aren't criminals, and they've seized on the idea of creating an ID card as an excuse to write new laws that will let them.
I doubt they even care whether the project succeeds in producing an ID card (it's currently failing, spectacularly - after three years of funding they've started collecting the fees and writing down your names, but there is no card, no database, no fingerprint collection, and no firm plan for when or even how they are going to do anything other than collect more fees; they are still wrangling with the contractors about who is going to be responsible for working out the plans for these various parts). The important part for them is that the laws will still be on the books, so they can escape from the recently imposed restrictions, even if there never is any card.
I find it interesting that the states are refusing to implement REAL ID, but the state's representatives voted for it. So who are they representing if their state is willing to flat-out refuse a law? This is a very serious breakdown of representation. It is absolute confirmation that the representative democracy is not working.
The other aspect of all this is that while Slashdotters are praising the states for standing-up for civil rights, the reality is that the states are fighting REAL ID because of funding issues, not because of civil rights issues. If the government tied federal funding of schools (or highways, or parks, or somethng) to the implementation of REAL ID, then the states would quietly fall-in line.
Citizens with valid and accurate papers are perfectly capable of entering a federal building with evil intent.
Heck, citizens with valid papers and evil intent don't even need to enter a federal building to cause harm. Timothy McVeigh just parked his Ryder truck full of ANFO in front of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The bit about preventing non-RealID holders from entering federal buildings has nothing to do with securing the buildings and everything to do with extorting compliance with RealID.
-- Alastair
Whatever may be the merits of his case or his arguments, he can not unilaterally decide what rights he has. It is the courts of law that decide whether the rights he thinks he has are really his rights or he is blowing smoke. He went before a judge, and the judge ruled that he is a kook. So he remains a kook till an appeals court reverses it. Stop supporting such idiots just because he is sticking to the MVD. You might hate MVD and MVD could be as stupid and inefficient as any govt bureaucracy can be. But the opposition must be reasonable. Supporting all kinds of idiots just because they oppose MDV is stupid.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
(1) People driving large, damaging vehicles also pay more in gasoline taxes because those types of vehicles are gas guzzlers.
(2) "Don't damage the road" is not justification to deny someone's right to travel. Nor is "you are black" justification to enslave a person. Or "you are a pregnant woman" justification to deny the right to get a job. And on and on. Rights can not be taken away for trivial, bullshit reasons.
(3) Horse/buggies actually do quite a bit of damage to roads, so by your reasoning they should be banned until properly registered.
However the Amish Americans are very resourceful at getting their way. That's why they don't have licenses, they do pay property tax, but not income tax, nor social security, nor medicare. They may be "old-fashioned" but they still believe in HUMAN RIGHTS FROM GOD, and no politician is going to convince an Amish American that he has the authority to overrule the creator, or ban them from using the People's Roads. Therefore they don't follow what they consider to be unjust, illegal, unconstitutional laws.
I guess that makes Amish Americans "kooks" too?
Oh well; I suspect they don't care what you think.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Out in the real world, it costs a $10 bribe to get a driver's license in India. No exam, no test, no proof of anything needed. And yet their accident rate is comparable to ours.
Regulation is *always* created to give somebody an advantage over somebody else. It's *never* created to protect against the incompetent. The real incompetents don't know how to drive, and DON'T drive. That's the law.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-down-a_b_46695.html
Ten Steps To Close Down an Open Society
1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2 Create a gulag
3 Develop a thug caste
4 Set up an internal surveillance system
5 Harass citizens' groups
6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7 Target key individuals
8 Control the press
9 Dissent equals treason
10 Suspend the rule of law