[jyl]

This seems like a burdensome and mis-represented law.

By next week, Congress is expected to pass a new national identity law requiring anyone seeking a driver's license to provide a photo ID and birth certificate -- along with proof of state residency, a Social Security card and a secondary document, such as a credit card.

Cripes, I couldn't tell you where my birth certificate or Social Security card are, and probably don't have them anymore. Under this law, I couldn't renew my driver's license!

Some people don't have Social Security numbers, by the way. If you are a foreigner here lawfully for a non-work purpose (e.g. a foreign student, or maybe the non-working spouse of a foreigner who is working here), you are not required to have an SSN. Apparently you now can't get a driver's license either.

On the other hand, the bad guys could simply forge the documents, couldn't they?

Do you think the clerk at the San Francisco DMV has the slightest idea whether a birth certificate from Tumbleweed, OK is "authentic"? And the Social Security card isn't exactly a forgery-proof document - last time I saw mine, it was simply a printed piece of paper.

Back when I was in college, I knew guys who bought phony birth certificates and used them to get driver's licenses, so that they could drink in bars. Believe me, the DMV has no ability to catch that.

So, now, for the law-abiding among us, we have made the process of getting or renewing your driver's license a huge pain in the butt, increased the costs of the state, lengthening the lines at your local DMV, and eliminated the convenient renew by mail process that most of us use now.

How, exactly, have we made the US safer?

The claimed justification for the law is that the 9/11 terrorists showed state-issued drivers' licenses when they got on the planes. Well, guess what, you can get on a plane by showing your US passport, or your German or Russian or Saudi passport for that matter. No way to change that unless you want to make it impossible for foreigners to fly in the US - yes, let's choke off international tourism and business travel, shall we?

The fact is that this law was not really intended to protect the US from terrorism. It was intended as an anti-illegal immigration measure, and introduced by a Republican Congressman whose pet issue is illegal aliens. When he couldn't get any support for the law, he stuck it on the $82BN emergency funding bill, where it sailed through.

Now, I don't have a strong view on whether illegal aliens should be able to get driver's licenses. Probably not, but I'm willing to listen to both sides. My point is, if that is the real purpose of the law, then it should be justified on that real basis and we can all weigh the burdens of the law against the real benefits, not against the supposed benefits of preventing terrorist attacks - which this law will do nothing about.

Doesn't it bother anyone that, in Washington, the cry of "protect America" has become the trump card to get any sort of stupid pet project enshrined in law and cooked into pork? Doesn't seem to bother the government.