HOW CONGRESS 'CHRISTMAS TREES' LEGISLATION

Many online gamblers were infuriated by the political sleight-of-hand by which Senator Bill Frist managed to get the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act attached to a must-pass but totally unrelated Safe Ports Act in last minute political manouevering at the end of September. The tactic worked - the primary bill was passed with the attachment riding through on its skirts.

This practice of attaching stalled bills to more important laws in order to ram both through is apparently not unusual in Congress. In fact the U.S. Senate Web site offers an official definition of the practice: a "Christmas tree bill," meaning unrelated amendments that adorn legislation.

The political editor for C-NET News, Declan McCullagh provided readers with interesting insight into this sort of Washington chicanery this week, drawing attention to the fact that: "President Bush just signed into law a bill slapping more restrictions on online gambling. The odd thing, though, is that at his press conference on Friday, Bush mentioned neither gambling nor the Internet."

That's because the restrictions were buried in Section 801 of a massive port security bill, which had nothing to do with the Internet and became one of those must-pass-before-November-7th political gambits of which Congress becomes so enamored in election years.

McCullagh writes that if this happened only rarely, perhaps American voters could forgive their elected representatives for gluing unrelated amendments onto a proposal that's destined to become law, asking the rhetorical question, "With a tight election just weeks away, how many politicians have the mettle to vote against "port security?"

However, the technique has become commonplace, says McCullagh, meaning that debate in the U.S. Congress is often bypassed. Voters also lose a chance to learn how their political representatives vote on specific topics, rather than on a 300-page bill with scores of unrelated components.

"Which, of course, is precisely the point," opines McCullagh. "Because politicians dislike being held accountable for their actions - specific votes can be compiled into embarrassing scorecards and inconvenient voting records - they prefer to lump everything together."

McCullagh goes on to give some shocking examples of how the practice is (mis)used:

• The Real ID Act, which creates a national ID card starting in 2008, was glommed onto an $82 billion "emergency" military spending bill (HR1268) last year. Unless Americans are outfitted with these federalized ID cards, they won't be able to do things like board airplanes or enter national parks and some government buildings.

Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning Texas Republican, warned at the time that the Real ID Act "offers us a false sense of greater security at the cost of taking a gigantic step toward making America a police state." But the spending bill sailed through the Senate unanimously and met with only a few dissenting votes in the House.

• Slapping a $15 tax on .com, .net and .org domain names in 1998 was part of an "emergency supplemental appropriations" bill (HR3579) to fund the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The cash went to politically-savvy Network Solutions, now part of VeriSign.

• Enacting a controversial proposal to punish Web masters with six months in prison if they publicly post anything that's "harmful to minors." Instead of holding an honest, up-or-down vote on the Child Online Protection Act, politicians slipped it into an "omnibus" bill (HR4328) to fund the bulk of the federal government, including the Treasury Department. COPA is being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

• Coercing libraries and schools into filtering Internet connections was done through the simple expedient of attaching it to an unrelated spending bill (HR4577) to fund the Treasury Department, Labor Department and Congress itself. A divided Supreme Court upheld the restrictions as constitutional.

McCullagh says there are many other examples, pointing out that the practice of hanging unpopular amendments on a Christmas tree bill isn't even limited to spending measures: A few weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Recording Industry Association of America tried to insert its own copyright-hacking-authorization language into what eventually became the Patriot Act.

"The worrisome thing is that, even though politicians have left Washington to campaign, they've only enacted two of the 12 spending bills necessary to fund the federal government for the 2007 fiscal year, McCullagh concludes. "So we should expect plenty of mischief when they return after the election: Think of it as an early Christmas present that Congress gives itself every year."

National ID cards on the way

A recent vote in Congress endorsing standardized, electronically readable driver's licenses has raised fears about whether the proposal would usher in what amounts to a national ID card.

In a vote that largely divided along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Republican-backed measure that would compel states to design their driver's licenses by 2008 to comply with federal antiterrorist standards. Federal employees would reject licenses or identity cards that don't comply, which could curb Americans' access to everything from airplanes to national parks and some courthouses.

The congressional maneuvering takes place as governments are growing more interested in implanting technology in ID cards to make them smarter and more secure. The U.S. State Department soon will begin issuing passports with radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips embedded in them, and Virginia may become the first state to glue RFID tags into all its driver's licenses.

Bottom line:
Proponents of the Real ID Act say it's needed to frustrate both terrorists and illegal immigrants. Critics say it imposes more requirements for identity documents on states, and gives the Department of Homeland Security carte blanche to do nearly anything else "to protect the national security interests of the United States."

More stories on privacy and national security
"Supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary," Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, one of the eight Republicans to object to the measure, said during the floor debate this week. "However, any state that opts out will automatically make nonpersons out of its citizens. They will not be able to fly or to take a train."

Paul warned that the legislation, called the Real ID Act, gives unfettered authority to the Department of Homeland Security to design state ID cards and driver's licenses. Among the possibilities: biometric information such as retinal scans, fingerprints, DNA data and RFID tracking technology.

Proponents of the Real ID Act say it adheres to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and is needed to frustrate both terrorists and illegal immigrants. Only a portion of the legislation regulates ID cards; the rest deals with immigration law and asylum requests. "American citizens have the right to know who is in their country, that people are who they say they are, and that the name on the driver's license is the real holder's name, not some alias," F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., said last week.

"If these commonsense reforms had been in place in 2001, they would have hindered the efforts of the 9/11 terrorists, and they will go a long

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