REAL ID Rant

My state’s sen­a­tors (that’s Montana, by the way) rather rea­son­ably think that the REAL ID Act is a load of crap that won’t do a heck of a lot to pro­tect Americans from any­thing but will limit the amount of per­sonal free­dom peo­ple have from gov­ern­ment oversight.

So this week, along with sen­a­tors from sev­eral other states, Montana’s sen­a­tors sent a let­ter to the Department of Homeland Security, ask­ing the agency to drop the May 11 dead­line for states to com­ply with the act.

“It is our posi­tion that this dead­line is both arbi­trary and inef­fec­tive and imposes unnec­es­sary bur­dens on all par­ties with­out enhanc­ing our national secu­rity ... Furthermore, the depart­ment has not taken the steps nec­es­sary to imple­ment this dead­line effec­tively. We there­fore respect­fully request you exempt all 50 States from the May 11, 2008, deadline.”

DHS essen­tially told them “tough cook­ies, do as the law says.”

What irks me is this: if Montana doesn’t com­ply with REAL ID, then my state driver’s license won’t be good enough to take me any­where out­side of Montana; it won’t be con­sid­ered ade­quate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion accord­ing to fed­eral rules.

If the agency does not lift the dead­line, the sen­a­tors said Chertoff needs to tell them why state res­i­dents could face sec­ondary screen­ing and what that addi­tional screen­ings would entail, if any­one would be pre­vented from board­ing air­planes, and other questions.

The agency said Montanans could travel with a pass­port to avoid scrutiny.

Great, my fed­eral gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends that if I want to travel any­where by air, within my own coun­try, I should pay more than $100 and wait many, many months for a pass­port (which is sup­posed to be for inter­na­tional travel). Grr.

Related posts:

1. Obama wins, wait­ing for MT outcome
2. Politics in Brief
3. Court: FCC does not have the author­ity to reg­u­late net neutrality
4. Some wind­ing thoughts about states rights and Montana House Resolution 3