"Conservatives" Push for More Big Brother
Time for another Gooberhead Award – presented periodically to those in the news whose tongues are moving 100 miles an hour, but who forgot to put their brains in gear.
Today's Gooberhead is Rep. Candice Miller, a Michigan Republican who has written a bill that effectively will require all Americans to start carrying a national ID card. The idea of having to "show your papers" has been an anathema to liberty-loving Americans since the founding of our nation, yet, ironically, so-called "conservatives" like Miller are now demanding such autocracy.
This legislation would authorize the homeland security czar to require all states to standardize everyone's driver licenses. The czar would set federal rules for the data that people would have to provide to get a license, requiring that every state license include such data. The feds could require your fingerprints, eye prints, or any other personal identifying information – thus nationalizing our drivers licenses.
Yet Rep. Miller, obtuse to the Orwellian nature of her own bill, says blithely: "I don't think this is anything that should cause anyone concern." No, it should not cause concern – it should cause us apoplexy!
Not only would she let the homeland czar usurp the authority of states, but she also lets the feds require all of the states to funnel our license info into a linked, national database that will be available to a broad range of government agencies and corporations.
This amounts to a backdoor way of creating a national ID card. If it passes, you won't be able to get on an airplane, rent a car, enter a government building, or otherwise move about freely without showing your federally-sanctioned papers. It creates a new system of internal passports for what we once hailed as the Land of the Free.
To fight this gooberheaded stumble toward a federal police state, call the ACLU: 212-549-2500.
