Wall St. Journal editorial board appears to be drifting near the edge.
Dear WSJ: Like it or not, state driver's licenses are the primary form of ID used for air travel and other activity used by past terrorists. States such as Utah were creating a massive security gap with their drivers' license issuance policy. So untwist your knickers and smell the coffee...
Oh give me a break, this has nothing to do with federalist principles as far as the WSJ is concerned. They are being disingenous. It's all about any attempt to impede the cheap labor they've been relentlessly defending for years.
Is this another unsigned editorial?
This bs makes one wonder if Al Hunt really left the WSJ, or he is still there as the unnamed editor.
No one needs to read the rest of it.
Only 10 states don't require a "proof of presence" test for DLs. Virginia imposed more stringent regs shortly after 9/11, and the final "proof of presence" component went into effect Jan. 2004. It merely requires that the applicant provide a U.S. birth certificate, naturalization docs, a passport, or foreign passport with valid visa. For local residence, a utility bill or bank statement.
Hardly what anyone in their right mind would call "intrusive."
As for the allegation that it's so "costly", the only costs are for personnel to look at and validate the required documents. I did see one estimate that costs were projected to be $20 million over 5 years, which even conservatively is only $400,000 per year, per state. That's perhaps 8 extra man-years per state to check docs (for you sticklers, a 5 minute document check would mean those 8 people could check 200,000 new DL or ID applications per year, per state).
The WSJ is absolutely nuts and completely disingenuous on this issue.
The people behind this ID bill don't care about terrorists, they're simply playing to the anti-immigrant crowd who want to make it more difficult for immigrants to compete in the job market.
What the anti-immigrants who can't keep a job don't realize is that they are their own worse enemies, not the immigrants. Most employers would rather close their business than hire the type of whining insecure malcontents that we see populating the immigration threads on FR.
The solution for terrorism is to carry arms anywhere at any time.
As for voting, stamp the voters forehead with indelible ink "I Voted!" As for verification of citizenship, get these lazy-ass bureaucrats and politicians out into the community knocking on doors meeting citizens so they know who is eligible. I have yet to meet my local county commissioner. Worthless bum. I know the guy who drives the county's front end loader better than I do the local pols.
I don't need a stupid ID. I know who I am. And I'm not a bloody cow.
Require national ID cards and the left will soon find uses for them in order to control citizens.
The place to stop illegals is at the border.
bump
Frankly I don't like parts of this Real ID act.
It's amazing how many people are ready to approve this without thinking the whole thing out.
Now what if the House had mandated that we all have a Bar code tattooed on our forearms so that the Government can just scan us, catalog us,etc. or even better we will be mandated to have an electronic chip placed under out skin.
The question is at what point do you say no?
Did everyone miss the part of the RFID chip in the License to track it or did that just pass over your heads?
I think there are better ways to deal with the Illegals and the Terrorist threat with the existing laws we have with some refinement.
As Conservatives we should be the ones opposing intrusions like this not supporting them. Smaller Government, well here we are creating yet another bureaucracy and to track it's own citizens even better than we are right now.
I expect this stuff from Liberals rather than Conservatives.
Who wins with this kind of legislation, Terrorists do, by forcing our open society to become more closed and regulated. By trying to protect the rights and freedoms we have, we have to lose more of them to fight the terrorists. Kind on an interesting Conundrum isn't it?
Databases contain Information.
Information is Knowledge.
Knowledge is Power.
Power Corrupts.
I think everyone should stick to discussing the issue at hand...the WSJ article, and federal requirements on state licenses.
Dont let yourselves be drawn into an personal exchange whereby the subject of the thread gets steered into a discussion of an individual poster and whether they are racist, a Nazi, etc.
This is a TACTIC some posters are using on FR. People go on these types of threads, and try to direct the discussion away from the pertinent issue to a personal slugfest.