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."

Comments

Re:Did the MT extension had anything to with this?

[JDWTopGuy]

What's this from? I'm probably supposed to know, I feel like a n00b.

Cal Native

[rossz]

I was born in Kaliforniastan and have lived my whole life here. I don't, for one second, believe this state will fight the national ID system. Our two senators (Box and Feinstein) are socialists to the extreme. They firmly believe in the nanny-state and have always fully supported forcing the peasants to be tagged and bagged.

Why do I still live here? I'm a contract tech worker (Linux system administrator) and this is where the jobs are. Plus, the weather is better than most other places in the world. To move to another state I would have to take a permanent position, which I am not against. However, nothing has come along that has attracted my attention enough.

Re:Good

[electrictroy]

A lot of those so-called "Quality of Life" lists are nothing more than arbitrary opinion by some socialist. For example, they assume that if a country has government-run healthcare that's a "high quality" asset and move them up in rank.

I strongly disagree.

I think government-run anything is a negative. Were I to produce a list, most of the so-called "top" countries would actually be at the bottom, due to monopolistic anti-choice services, lack of individual freedom, and onerous laws that treat adults like children too stupid to run their own lives.