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Administration Wants To Scale Back Real ID Law
The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing the Real ID program from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."
We go right back to where we were on Sept. 10, 2001. Maybe governors should have been in the Capitol when we knew a plane was on its way to Washington wanting to kill a few thousand more people.
You hear that? The lawmakers that take us to war were actually in danger of physical harm themselves! Imagine that! But their voice, urgency and argument are getting pretty pathetic now that it's been eight years and no such thing has reoccurred. The fear card isn't so strong these days. "You might lose your house and/or job" seems to worry people more than "the odds are 1:10,000,000 that a terrorist may kill you in an extremely contrived scenario!"
Remember any sort of compromise or rational thought is bad because Sensenbrenner says doing so instantly brings us back to pre-9/11 danger. Beware of this sort of mentality. Beware the men that play with your emotions and speak in absolutes for the world is shades of grey.
My work here is dung.
The real problem with ID issuance in the United States is everything -- everything, including a passport -- goes back to a birth certificate, and not all difficult to obtain a phony birth certificate. I'm not sure this problem really has a short term solution.
It's useless for preventing terrorist attacks, but highly useful for helping government officials track a citizen's movements. Now they can use that power for good (more promptly serving arrest warrants) or evil (harassing political opponents as just one example). Anti-terrorism is a smokescreen. What RealID proponents really want, and won't stop until they get, is the 24/7 tracking of every person in the country.
What I say to this is, if you're not doing anything wrong ... then where you are and what you're up to are none of the government's damned business.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Why not just tattoo a number on people. Hear it worked real well about 60 years ago.
I'd be curious are people here more apprehensive about the intrusive government or terrorists?
When can I have my America back?
Hope is the currency of fools
A National ID would not have stopped the American terrorist who recently murdered the Holocaust Museum guard nor the American terrorist who murdered that doctor who performed abortions.
Heard of DNA?
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
Alcohol consumption and the driver's license relationship is odd when it comes to punishment for underage consumption. Many states will try to revoke a driver's license for underage consumption even if there was no related driving offense.
Many alcohol and drug laws go too far to stop big offenses by making minor offenses into a big ones as well. For example, in my state, testing positive in a drug test is the same as possession and results in more jail time compared to other states. And don't get me started on the 21 drinking age and the federal blackmail with highway funds.
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
Why does there have to be a solution?
More efficient commerce isn't an acceptable answer.
A free people don't have to verify themselves to their government and the government has no intrinsic right to demand that of a person.
"it doesn't make our government track our every move or anything."
And you know that how?
Because in my country at least getting government departments to tell us what they do and don't talk to each other about and what info they are and aren't mining about the citizens is like pulling teeth and requires costly court battles.
I assume you just implicitly trust your public servants to do the moral thing in the course of their duties?
I've worked in our federal government, if the data is there and there isn't a specific law banning the use of it, at best there's a pilot project or little dodgey in house app to play with the data a million different ways. I know this because I wrote one and though it was pretty benign to start with, the potential that it created and the hunger for information on everyone displayed by the various deparments I worked with I'm sure it's not benign (or even legal) anymore.
The thing is, who's going to stop them from doing things like that? You?
My license had been expired for six months. Renewal, pay a late fee and they hand it over. Easy. It's funny but on that day I heard on the radio some
Republican senator saying: "If we have national health insurance, we will have healthcare like the DMV."
Now I'm a right wing kind of guy, but I couldn't help but immediately think:
"I wish my health care was as good as my DMV". I would say Republicans should shy away from DMV arguments, because right now health care is so screwed up that
making it like the DMV would be an improvement. Imagine an emergency room where they had different lines for different ailments, actually gave out numbers like the DMV does, had friendly people and a nice building... and only cost $50.
This is my sig.