Oh the outrage just keeps coming

[solarbird]

CNN.com carried the news, but downplayed it in the headline; "Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns."

No.

"Federal ID plan implements internal passport" is the correct headline. Quoting the article:

(CNN) -- Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

[...]

More than half the nation's state legislatures have passed symbolic legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

[...]

The cards would be mandatory for all "federal purposes," which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don't comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

"For terrorists, travel documents are like weapons," Chertoff said. "We do have a right and an obligation to see that those licenses reflect the identity of the person who's presenting it."

Read Mr. Chertoff's commentary real carefully there, will you? "Travel documents are like weapons." Relocating without government authority is a bomb waiting to go off.

Those of you not familiar with the history of the Soviet Union may not be familiar with the concept of the "internal passport." The "internal passport" was the document set you needed in order to move about within the country, get jobs - really, do anything. But key to this was controlling mobility. Most of the Soviet sphere had them, or variations on them, inherited from the old Czarist imperial era, though initially condemned and dropped by the Communist revolution. They were reimplemented during the Russian Civil War and never, ever dropped; they were a great way to control the population, since you couldn't move, rent, etc., without them.

Now we have cabinet ministers saying that surprise! We're implementing that here.

Yes, some of you will say, I'm overreacting. NO, I'M FUCKING WELL NOT. Yes, you can still drive across a state border without one. But have you tried, say, renting without showing photo ID lately? You can't. Well, you can, but it's illegal. It's not policy: it's law. It's part of "immigration reform" law, passed a few years ago. Right now, that ID requirement can mean all sorts of things, such as a state identification card. Or a student card. Or a driver's license.

Tomorrow, it can mean Federal ID only. Like, say, a passport. Or an internal passport.

Our state, I'm proud to say, is one of the states which have passed bills banning implementation. Obviously, this is payback, intended to whip the states into compliance with the new system. As Mr. Chertoff said:

"This is not a mandate," Chertoff said. "A state doesn't have to do this, but if the state doesn't have -- at the end of the day, at the end of the deadline -- Real ID-compliant licenses then the state cannot expect that those licenses will be accepted for federal purposes."

"It's not a mandate, but we'll beat you down good and proper if you don't go along." I'll be telling my legislators not to back off, under any terms. I recommend you do this too. Because seriously - fuck this.

Work at the state level, people. We won't hear much against this from Congress; they're too busy making things worse. State governments will have to fight it.

Comments

Wow

[tambyrd.livejournal.com]

I picked up your journal from someone else's (sorry, not sure who) and you should really keep writing ...

Cross-posting my response: http://tambyrd.livejournal.com/52223.html

Re: Wow

[solarbird]

And here I was taking a nice little break from this crap. The shit going down is unbelievable. Check above.

Re: Wow

[tambyrd.livejournal.com]

Yea, just browsed the FSM website too.

That site makes me want to throw up.

And people wonder why half the country is on Prozac or one of its relatives.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

That's one thing the Canadians have really got on us. They bothered to put a right of travel in their Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (That, and they know how to hold a bloody election...)

There are three things that give us breathing room here. One, there's a five year extension provision. That gives us time to elect a congress with some guts to get this put down. Two, Gregoire has negotiated a plan that makes our 2008-issued ID's good for border crossings *without* participating in "Real-ID". And three? We have the Internet. I mean, yeah, traveling is a goodness, more than that, an inalienable right, despite the fact that the Founding Fathers forgot to codify it... but. As long as we can communicate, we can still fight for our rights. If Vaclav Havel and his buddies could free Czechoslovakia, getting out from under this tin-hat's thumb should be child's play.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

Sure, if most people want to get out from under this thumb.

The real scary truth is that this is exactly what a large portion of this country believes it wants.

And the internet makes it vastly easier to control people, since you can do all kinds of silent packet inspection and filtering based on content. See also China, who are still figuring it out, but are working on it.

The USA is too geographically huge and culturally diverse (in the red state/blue state sense) to successfully "free" this country from anything. Going back to China, that was the whole key to the Tienamen Square Protest massacre. "oh shit the troops we had on hand were from the city and know these guys... bring in another division from the countryside who don't know them and don't agree with them" Bang. instant destroyed revolution, just add tank treads. That's precisely how a government facing an uprising would quell it in the US. Is either coast acting up? Send in troops from the South or the Midwest who want to fight for God's Country against these Godless Commie Babykillers. Is the midwest fighting back? Send in troops from the southwest and southeast who think they know best. The agendas are too regionally factionalized and the notion of what freedoms are important are too different for us to come together as a country and fight united against an oppressive government.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Well, we used to have protections against this with the post-Reconstruction Posse Comitatus Act, which prevented domestic deployment of military troops for law enforcement except as explicitly allowed by Constitution or a declaration of Congress. The job of responding to civil unrest fell first to local police, then to the National Guard (organized at the state level.) The National Guard was not intended as a supplement to overseas military deployments, either.

In the early 70s, amid anti-war and other left-wing violent protests, the act was eroded (basically cancelled, actually) to allow dispatch of federal troops in some circumstances. Last year, the law was further eroded. Starting October 1, the president of the US can declare a civil emergency at his discretion and dispatch federal troops without any say from Congress. The bill to give him those powers was passed the same day as the Military Commissions Act that gutted habeas corpus.

Yay, slow motion Reichstag fire!

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

er, I meant to say the law was eroded in 1971, and effectively canceled last year.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming "ex-president" Bush or he can become "President-for-Life" Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Tongue in cheek irony? Think again! (http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:cnnnSRimWmcJ:www.familysecuritymatters.org/index.php%3Fid%3D1208571+%22president+for+life+bush%22+site:familysecuritymatters.org&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

[solarbird]

Elevated to new post.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Will never happen.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

It's very unlikely, granted. But with the amount of powers being claimed by the current president, backed by legislation and the courts, it's worth worrying about even if it's only a few extremists talking about it right now. Extremism has a way of being mainstreamed unless people stand up against it.

And remember this. If these presidential powers aren't repealed, they'll still be in effect if and when Hillary Clinton (or any Democrat, pick your poison) is elected president. If that doesn't scare you as a conservative, I don't know what would. An imperial presidency, even one that stops short of using the name, is bad no matter what party the president is from.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Yes well it started with the previous President and no one said 'Boo' about it then. So guess what? Now the other side is using it. Remember the whole 'stroke of the pen - law of the land! Kinda Cool!' thing from the Clinton Whitehouse? And how Clinton wrote more excutive orders than like every previous president combined?

I didn't care for it when it started with a Democratic President, I liked it less that Congress (which can override Excutive orders) let him get away with a lot of it. People are complaining now because the shoe is on the other foot, but they really don't want to actually DO anything about it, because they're all hoping Clinton will get elected and then they'll have their way again.

So right now don't expect -either- party to do anything about reigning in Presidental powers because -Both- sides think they're going to be in control come '09. The only thing that will stop it will be if one party holds the Whitehouse and the other holds the Congress, and the one holding Congress doesn't waste time with political show trials.

This is why I think we need term limits.

[avram]

And how Clinton wrote more excutive orders than like every previous president combined?

Stop exaggerating. Executive orders have been numbered sequentially since 1862. Clinton's first executive order was #12833, and his last was #13197. That's a total of 364, or 45.5/year. Dubya's been averaging about 40/year so far (but he'll beat Clinton if he issues a bunch at the last minute like Clinton did). Poppy Bush issued 164, or 41/year. Reagan beat Clinton with 380 (47.5/year). Carter issued an amazing 80/year!

Looking back at 1962, I see the numbering is in the low 10000s, which means that for the first hundred years of numbering, presidents averaged over 100 executive orders per year, so modern presidents actually issue fewer orders.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I said boo when Clinton and the Republican Congress (most Democrats have generally been against this sort of thing) eroded civil liberties and increased executive power. And actually, it started before even that. I remember being worried about some of the legislation and executive orders during the first Bush presidency, and the nasty executive orders go back much further to at least Harry Truman and his Cold War national security directives. One reason I voted for Nader in 1996 and 2000 was the bipartisan attack on civil liberties and the broader Constitution. But it has gotten much worse much more quickly over the last six or seven years.

But you're right, people who let Clinton get away with lesser abuses were only setting the stage for Bush. This isn't a partisan issue. It's an issue of people who support the Constitution and those from both parties who often don't. It's worth considering that the majority of people voting against these abuses of power are Democrats. It's not just enough to throw up our hands and say there's nothing we can do. We can do something--elect more pro-Constitution officials, most of whom are Democrats. (Ron Paul is an exception on the other side.)

[banner.livejournal.com]

-elect more pro-Constitution officials, most of whom are Democrats
Would these be they same Democrats who opposed the civil rights amendment?
Or the Democrats who voted for the Brady Bill and have been trying to subvert our 2nd Amendment rights for the last 50 years?
Or maybe these are the Democrats who are planning to bring back the 'Fairness Doctrine' in an attempt to do an end run around the 1st amendment?
Or maybe the Democrats who promote 'Hate' laws which are definite attemtps to thwart the first amendment?
Or the ones who are always raising taxes and growing the size of government so they can just intrude more and more on our lives?

I'd love to see who these 'Democrats' are. I can only assume that you don't pay any attention at all to what actually goes on in congress.

What we need are more conservatives, the old school 'less government equals more rights' Reagan school conservatives, which are very rare these days. Rights do not come from the government, and if you think putting more politicans in it will get you more, you're wrong.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

The civil rights amendment? I assume you mean the Civil Rights Act, which was opposed by many conservative Democrats, most of whom have since died, become Republicans, or are in a small minority of Democrats who vote the wrong way. Robert Byrd is an exception.

The Democrats are generally poor on the second amendment, but I do think it's important to weigh all of our rights before rejecting a party and just making a decision based on one.

The Fairness Doctrine did not limit free speech; it gave equal access to the limited broadcast spectrum to people of differing views. It was suspended decades ago, and the reason a small number of people want to bring it back is that some news sites have become nothing more than propaganda.

Hate crimes laws do not limit free speech. They simply increase the punishment for a violent crime that is aimed at a community rather than simply at an individual. They are no more violations of the first amendment than laws distinguishing between intentional and unintentional homicide.

The size of government (http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2007/06/comparing-presidents-size-of-government.html) grew at a greater rate under some Republican presidents (Reagan and W Bush) than Democratic ones (Clinton and Carter), and there's no clear correlation over our lifetimes. Reagan oversaw the largest expansion of government except for the Kennedy/LBJ years, larger than every other president since. It is true that Democrats tax more, but Republicans usually spend just as much if not more. The question is whether tax-and-spend is worse than borrow-and-spend. Since borrow-and-spend results in interest payments and creates a greater crowding out effect on private investment, it is actually worse for economic growth in the long term. The eventual recourse is taxes down the road, or inflation by increasing the money supply to pay off the debt faster and shrink the size of the debt compared to the overall size of the economy. The end result is that borrow-and-spend is simply deferred tax-and-spend, and is fiscally irresponsible.

Now, if you want to reduce spending along with taxes, you'll have to give up policy decisions like the war in Iraq, and Bush's new Medicare benefit. Social Security actually brings in more money currently than it costs, and other domestic programs and entitlements are minuscule in comparison to the military budget.

When we talk about civil liberties and blocking government power, liberal Democrats are the most reliable good votes. 160 Democrats voted against Real ID. Only 8 Republicans did. That's typical for this kind of legislation. Now if guns are more important to you than not living under a dictatorial government, that's your choice--you might at least get to test the idea that gun rights help you against a tyrannical government. It's not the choice I'd make, though.

[banner.livejournal.com]

The Federal ID plan is something that's been being pushed for a very very long time. (California sadly is all for it) Yes it needs to be stopped -again-. Thing is, with the way the state cooperate on license information, we're almost there already.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

While I agree with your general outrage, I might politely suggest that your tactics need work.

Railing about the invasion of privacy and a potential Soviet state, while entertaining, isn't likely to convince a state legislator who's facing an uphill election in a conservative district.

What will convince them is when you point out one important fact: it's an unfunded federal law.

The several states are expected to cough up a fair amount of money - $100 million to $200 million per state, by some estimates - to retrofit their ID systems to meet the new standard.

This is the real reason Maine, Washington, etc. are refusing to comply.

If the feds ever get around to actually funding Real ID, we're going to have a real problem. For now, though, the anti-Real ID legislation has forced the implementation date into 2009, well past the '08 elections. It's a program that's ripe for being dismantled early in a new 2009 administration, preferably as part of a long-overdue overhaul of the PATRIOT act provisions.

I doubt you'll see much more than sound and fury signifying little before then. The Democrats aren't stupid enough to try to undo the act before the elections, lest they be accused of being "soft on terrorism."

[solarbird]

Railing about the invasion of privacy and a potential Soviet state, while entertaining, isn't likely to convince a state legislator who's facing an uphill election in a conservative district.
I don't care what your tactics are.

The Democrats aren't stupid enough to try to undo the act before the elections, lest they be accused of being "soft on terrorism."
That Democrats - particularly Democrats, since they are the supposed alternative - are unwilling to make the reality argument is one of the reasons we need two new parties and not just one. Aside from the infuriating bend-over-and-take-it basis of that argument, the facts are that Rove tried to take them to the woodshed in 2006 - "soft on terrorism" was the entire Republican line of 2006 - and lost. Hard. I'm sick of that excuse, and I reject it outright. A politician can make a fucking stand or get the hell out of my face. This "we'll screw you less" bullshit is how we've gotten here, and I'm not fucking willing to play along with that anymore.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

Calm down. I'm on your side. Was that meant to be a convincing argument or just venting frustration?

I stand by my original thesis: for this particular issue, the money argument will be powerful and persuasive with current state legislators around the country. You don't care, you say. Fair enough. Somebody else might.

[solarbird]

Eh, I was in a hurry. When i said "I don't care what your tactics are," I meant in the sense of, "I don't care what tactics you decide to use." As in, "okay, whatever works." But I absolutely stand by the second paragraph. That's not just frustration - though frustration is a part of it. I think the essentially exclusive use of that approach is what has gotten us where we are now, and I reject it.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

2005 Roll Call Vote for Real ID (http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll031.xml) (House of Representatives):

Yeas Nays PRES NV
Republican 219 8 4
Democratic 42 152 7
Independent 1
TOTALS 261 161 11

The majority of Democrats voted the right way. Arranging those same people in a third party won't help (even if you add in the 8 Republicans and 1 independent who also voted the right way). What has to happen is for the minority of bad Democrats and most of the Republicans to be unseated. That can happen just as easily within the two-party system we have than with a third party or two. In fact, many of the yes voters were unseated in the 2006 elections.

With their current majority, the Democrats simply can't undo the underlying law or the recent executive order effectively establishing an internal passport, because there's a minority within the party that's conservative and large enough to give the right-wingers a majority. In 2005 there was literally nothing they could do, as the 219 Yes votes among Republicans were a majority even if no Democrats had voted.

Calling this a problem with the Democrats is misplaced when nearly 80% of the Democrats vote the right way and Republicans vote almost uniformly the wrong way. I really don't know what more you want Democrats to do, on this particular issue. Maybe they should set themselves on fire in protest in the rotunda?

At the state level, you can't even hold the Republicans to blame. The vote against real ID compliance was nearly unanimous. The problem isn't the legislative branch federally or at the state level--it's the Bush administration, and the national Republican Party.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Burying bills in committee is a time-honored tradition in congress, if you don't want it to pass but think it will.

That they are not willing to do this on some recent bills says very bad things about the leadership, same as it said bad things about those not being willing to filibuster Alito (and one of my personal Senate-heroes, Russ Feingold, screwed up on that, too, tho being the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act gets him a pass on this, since he's been otherwise good).

Unless you're still working from the presumption that the current Republicans are good people who have a couple of wrong ideas but basically want to play fair and get things done, this sort of "be nice to them and hopefully they'll be nice to us too and eventually come around approach" is just sheer stupidity.

Which arguably could be said about working from that presumption of fair-mindedness on the part of Republicans. This was from a review I wrote about a book of Susan Estrich's (who I used to like, and maybe still would, but not this book):
When Estrich says, speaking as a democrat who thinks the Kerry and Gore campaigns were too liberal for *her*, that she fears cancer, not fundamentalists? OMG. I've been in the hospital for cancer. I was told I would probably die of cancer (when I was 19; I've been fine for a long time now). Members of my family have died of cancer. Friends of mine have had or now have cancer. And I'm way more scared of the fundies. They can (and are) fucking up the whole world on a level way worse than cancer ever could unless it became as contagious as the common cold. And they can hurt the world and its cultures in ways cancer couldn't, even then. When Estrich says she doesn't hate Bush and the neocons, she hates Osama bin Laden? All I can do is scream and point at who has done far, far more damage to the world at large and, for that matter, to the United States, if you're going to be purely provincial in your view of things. (not to mention? bin Laden is a fundamentalist. There's a cognitive dissonance going on here

I think most of the Democrats now are working from the Estrich presumption--they view the Republicans as coworkers they want to get along with, not enemies. Which would be fine if the Republicans were *acting* like coworkers, but regardless of what they actually think, they're treating the Democrats like enemies and have been since at least '92. For the Democrats to recognize this and play hardball tactics in return would be nice.

Also, as someone else said above, the Dems in the past haven't been consistently good on this issue. The whole idea for a third party would be getting rid of the entrenched Democratic establishment, who aren't making a lot of us very happy these days. To the extent they are, I suspect a lot is only because of internal pressure from people getting outraged like this. I want leaders who will follow good instincts in the right direction w/out needing opinion polls or party anger to motivate them--hell, I want them to be willing to do the right thing in the face of a hostile public. Trust me, I *want* the democrats to get their act together. But I'm not gonna defend them from much deserved internal criticism or tell anyone who's as sick of them as I am to settle down, either -- w/out threads like this one, I don't think there's much hope of the people who are there now changing. (tho suggestions on how to change it over time are of course welcome)

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would prefer the Democrats tie more things up with procedural maneuvers. But the reality is that in most cases those maneuvers are symbolic and can't actually stop legislation unless the Democrats want to stop passing any legislation at all.

The reality is that the Democrats are in a tough spot with a GOP minority that refuses to compromise and a president who will veto anything that actually might change things. I'm not happy with how far they've gone, but a disagreement over tactics is hardly a reason to call for additional parties that are unlikely to have any more concrete success. The problem isn't principle in most cases, it's lack of political ability to enact or block legislation based on those principles.

And frankly, people like Susan Estrich do not represent most of the party. Look at how people vote. Kerry and Gore are/were middle-of-the-road Democrats in the Senate (in Gore's case, on many issues, he was relatively right-leaning). Pelosi is at least as liberal as they are if not more, so the party leadership is hardly getting in the way of the liberals. (Harry Reid's pretty conservative, but I chalk up most of his caution to the parliamentary rules of the Senate, which are more favorable to the minority.) I also see no desire by most Dems to get along, just an acceptance that political reality limits their options. A lot of independent voters don't take kindly to obstructionism even if it's on principle. They want to see things get done.

I have no idea how you expect a third party to have any impact on the Democratic party leadership. If you don't like the leadership, the best thing you can do is to get more liberals within the party (both in Congress and in the party structure) to change the leadership. Defecting to a third party will only strengthen the hand of conservative Democrats. I personally think Nancy Pelosi's a pretty good leader considering the circumstances, but if you can get someone like John Conyers (or even my representative Jay Inslee, who rocks) to take her place, more power to you. But how are you going to do that from a third party?

Third parties can play a role if they can form a decisive bloc on a narrow set of issues and force the other parties to adopt those positions or lose votes to them over time. I really don't see how that's going to work with the current situation, particularly when a majority of Democrats already have the right position on the key issues.

If you want to be angry at Democrats, be angry at the appeasing Democratic minority, like those who voted in favor of Real ID, and those who have made filibusters politically impossible in the cases you mention. They're basically an anti-third party, forming a decisive bloc that leads to exactly the wrong outcome. They need to go and soon.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Is there a list of which states have and haven't complied?

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Linkable, online, I mean.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act, which has sources.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

The ACLU has a site for RealID that includes this info:

http://www.realnightmare.org/news/105/