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

[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.