Papers, please...

So, this morning I sat down at my desk at $COMPANY_NAME and decided to wake up a little by reading some news on Slashdot.org, and they linked to this article over at CNN, regarding the REAL ID Act.

Needless to say... I was neither amused nor heartened by what I read.

For those who've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, the REAL ID Act is a piece of legislation that was snuck under the rug in 2005, as part of a military spending and tsunami relief bill. In essence, it mandates (even though DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff says it's not a mandate. Honest.) that all states bring their ID and driver's licenses into compliance with a single standardized format, and furthermore that they all maintain and "be willing to" share informational databases between themselves.

According to this act, Joe Citizen has until 2013 to get with the program. That means you and I, dear reader, are going to be put into a database, and we're going to have to fork over at least four forms of ID to get the damnable thing.

But it's not a mandate. Honest.

This ID will be required at all Federal facilities. This includes: airports, government buildings, federal facilities of any kind, and national parks and monuments. If you're from one of the states opposing this, and you only have your state driver's license on you when you go to see any federally funded park, monument, or recreational facility, you will be refused entry unless you also have your passport with you.

But it's not a mandate. Honest.

The estimated costs for this program range over $21 billion. So far, only about $40 million has been set aside. The states are apparently expected to shoulder the rest of the burden, which is in turn going to fall back on the citizens in the form of taxation and/or higher service fees for obtaining the ID than was normal. For example, here in Texas, it currently costs $25.00 to get your driver's license, by far the most common form of identification. Unless the Feds fund this more, it could cost your average Texas citizen over $100.00 to obtain their REAL ID.

DHS Secretary Chertoff was recently quoted in the CNN article as saying that this is not a mandate, but if a state doesn't comply, there would be repercussions, and that the citizens of that state would not have their state-issued IDs accepted for federal purposes. Bill Walsh of the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank that supports this idea, apparently seems to think that if say, a terrorist uses a New Hampshire ID to go and do naughty things, then New Hampshire -- and by logical extension in my mind, its citizens -- should be held responsible.

Oh, right. It's not a mandate. It's coercion.

Your average Tango isn't going to be quite so dumb as to try and enter the country with bad papers, standardized ID or not. This plan also completely disregards the fact that if there are sleeper cells here, they'll already have the proper documentation. Sure, we'll be able to point a finger at the guy's smoking corpse and say, "We know who that pile of steaming giblets is! We know who done blowed up our chill'uns real gud! We should revile him, dig up all his friends and family history, and trot them out on the tee-vee to be humiliated and scorned in front of billions!"

And that'll be great and all, y'know? Media circus, I'm sure. Ted Koppel will be able to afford a new head, finally... but it won't prevent it from happening. Which is what Our Political Heroes say it's going to do.

And trust me, I use the word "Heroes" in only the most ironic sense, dripping with enough sarcasm that you could irrigate fields with it... but I wouldn't want to eat anything grown in that tainted earth, nor reaped from its dark harvest -- I'd be afraid the corn would bite me.

But I digress. This whole setup reminds me of certain Eastern European principalities not too long ago, or at least an initial step toward that. It also stands to disenfranchise a large number of people -- For example, in many cases, you cannot get a passport if you owe child support. This makes sense, as you don't want deadbeat moms and dads whisking away to Acapulco. Many states also disbar you from your driver's license if you're picked up on a drug charge, whether it's deserved or not, or at least slap you with ridiculous surcharges to get it renewed afterward.

If these people cannot get a REAL ID, and cannot get a passport, then technically as far as the Feds are concerned, they are un-persons... and they get locked down, unable to travel by air (at first -- I suspect road checkpoints are going to come later), unable to enter a government building without invasive screening procedures, and I suspect...

...Unable to vote. It's a federal activity after all, and you have to show your driver's license. At the very least, this is another prime example of OPH regarding the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as Constitoilet Paper.

I leave you with this quote from a favorite movie of mine, The Hunt For Red October:

Vasily Borodin: Do you think they will let me live in Montana?

Capt. Ramius: I would think they'll let you live wherever you want.

Vasily Borodin: Good. Then I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman, and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pick-up truck, or umm... possibly even...a recreational vehicle, and drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?

Capt. Ramius: Oh yes.

Vasily Borodin: No papers?

Capt. Ramius: No papers. State-to-state.

More information at www.RealNightmare.org.