Real ID is four weeks away...

[Eric]

Decision time is less than four weeks away.

Beginning in 2010, Americans will have to decide whether to accept the requirements of the federal Real ID Act - and submit to what amounts to a national ID card. It would be the first time that Americans would have to show "papers" to government apparatchiks upon demand - and the first time the government of the United States would have the technical means to monitor us at virtually every turn - via "biometric" identifiers (fingerprints, retinal scans) and "radio frequency" RFID transmitters built into "smart" National ID cards that would replace our current drivers licenses.

That, in brief, is the essence of Real ID - and what is coming come 2010. The question is, will we accept it?

Legitimate objections to the whole thing are obvious. Why should any allegedly free citizen who has committed no crime be required to submit to 24-7 monitoring of his comings and goings, to the collection of a vast database containing information about his buying habits, medical history - and so on?

Why, moreover, should any citizen have to present his or her "papers" to government (and private sector) Overlords in order to enter public buildings, travel or conduct lawful business?

This stuff we hear about the "post 9/11 world" and the "war on terror" doesn't cut it for me - especially given a wide-open border and a do-nothing policy toward millions of illegal aliens from Central and South America who are never pestered with questions about where they come from - or where they're headed.

This fact alone proves the whole thing is a con. If "security" where really the issue, the sieve-like border would be controlled. The millions of who-knows-where-they-came-from resident aliens would be rounded up and dealt with.

Instead, U.S. citizens are increasingly treated like East German proles within the borders of their own country. They are frisked at airports; their e-mails and letters are monitored; they are randomly stopped and interrogated for no reason whatsoever at "sobriety checkpoints." And now they are to be issued with Real IDs designed to monitor them even more closely.

Which shows that the real object of the Real ID Act is to give the federal government more power over the American people - and not to protect them against the pitiful specter of Islamic bogeymen.

I wonder at what point will we say "when"? How much more of this stuff will we stand? Is the spirit of 1776 and July 4 that dissipated? Have we become that subservient? That weak-minded? That passive?

Well, what can we do?

At least two things come to mind. The first is to make it clear - by relentlessly haranguing lawmakers both local and national that we do not want a national ID card and that we will vote against any pol who supports it.

This has already been working to great effect; roughly half of all states have either passed or are actively considering some type of anti-Real ID legislation. (See www.realnightmare.org/news/105/ for more detailed info on a state-by-state basis.)

The second is to refuse to accept a Real ID should it come to that. If millions of us simply stood together and - peaceably - told the government that a national ID card and all it entails is unacceptable, it would be enough. As the marchers of the civil rights era (and before them, the opposition to Prohibition) clearly showed, widespread refusal to comply with evil or stupid edicts of the state can and does work.

If, that is, we have the stones to stand our ground.

[J. ZIMM]

I have been saying for the past Thirty or so years that we are due for an uprising. Whether its on taxes, Government, or whatever. Now it is about time for the wimps of this nation get off their dead asses, put down their video games and join some of us old timers, vets, and take our country back. I'm sick and tired of hearing from the 'Bleeding Hearts, telling me that things are 'unfair' and we should not feel the way we do. Bull Snort! I'm tired of the Government peeling away on my Social Security to pay for their needs. Hell, what about mine and others like me! Medicare keeps going up, and now this boondoggle they call Health Care reform. The Government started this mess way back when, when they took from Social Security stating that there was an Abundance that we would never need. The same with Medicare. Some of us may remember when that happened. That, I believe was to help offset the cost of Vietnam. Now we have a bunch of MORONS, in D.C., that are doing the same thing. Just going a different way. It seems that you don't have a say so anymore, except to vote these idiots out of office, and let the newbies understand that if they don't get their Poop-in-a-group, they'll be going the same way the idiots they replaced went. Only three terms would be allowed. But this was about I.D. cards, wasn't it? What I have to say about that is "WELCOME TO THE USS of A".