Audrey Hudson, Washington Times, March 22, 2008
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has denied a request by key senators on both sides of the aisle to delay the deadline for states to comply with new federal regulations for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards.
Mr. Chertoff rebuked the lawmakers for requesting that the congressionally mandated timeline be changed to implement Real ID, saying “this plain statutory language mandates the May 11 deadline.”
{snip}
“These regulations raise disturbing constitutional issues regarding the ability of some citizens to travel freely and access their federal government,” the lawmakers wrote in a March 12 letter to Mr. Chertoff.
States have until March 31 to request an extension to enroll in the program to set standards for determining which state-issued identifications are secure enough to be accepted by the federal government, which determines whether those IDs are good for such purposes as boarding commercial flights and entering federal buildings.
{snip}
The Associated Press reported that South Carolina, Maine, and Montana are the only states that have not sought extensions to comply with the new program, which is expected to cost nearly $4 billion.
New Hampshire asked for an exemption, but it has not been granted.
The National Governors Association on Thursday announced it will support the program’s creation, which was recommended by the September 11 Commission, but asked Congress for $1 billion in initial funding.
{snip}
“It is a program that will set standards for the security of state-issued licenses and identification cards that are offered for federal purposes,” Mr. Chertoff said in the letter.
{snip}
“Showing up at the airport with only a driver’s license from such a state will be no better than showing up without identification,” he said.
Original article
(Posted on March 26, 2008)
Comments
It should now be obvious to any thinking person that neocons like Chertoff are just as much of a threat to the American way of life as liberals are.
Chertoff, in appearance as well as ideology, reminds me of a 21st Century Lenin. If Chertoff was so concerned about “homeland security,” he would focus more on closing the border with Mexico than with neocon police-state measures like Real ID.
Posted by Old Victorian at 7:04 PM on March 26
It should now be obvious to any thinking person that neocons like Chertoff are just as much of a threat to the American way of life as liberals are.
Chertoff, in appearance as well as ideology, reminds me of a 21st Century Lenin. If Chertoff was so concerned about “homeland security,” he would focus more on closing the border with Mexico than with neocon police-state measures like Real ID.
Posted by Old Victorian at 7:08 PM on March 26
When I hear the rhetoric of big-government neoconservatives like Chertoff, it reminds me of how much the Republican Party has changed over the last 20 years, and Not for the better.
Ronald Reagan was far from perfect, but he was a patron saint compared to people like Chertoff and Bush Junior.
We don’t need Real ID.
We don’t need “internal passports.”
We don’t need video cameras at every street corner.
We don’t need more gun control.
We don’t need more unscreened immigrants from the third world.
We DO need politicians with the intestinal fortitude to listen to American voters and support common-sense measures that will truly keep the United States and its citizenry safe and secure without the Orwellian police state that still allows REAL criminals to do their dirty deeds in the shadows.
Just look at London, England as an example of what I am talking about. Video cameras everywhere, yet crime is rising at an alarming rate.
Posted by Old Victorian at 7:35 PM on March 26
Figures, Chertoff looks remarkably like Vladimir Lennon. He’s just another of Bush’s cronies carrying out the will of Haliburton while they reap massive profits from the Iranian war.
Posted by at 7:41 PM on March 26
“It is a program that will set standards for the security of state-issued licenses and identification cards that are offered for federal purposes,” Mr. Chertoff said in the letter.
“Showing up at the airport with only a driver’s license from such a state will be no better than showing up without identification,” he said.”
Chertoff in Russian is ‘The Devil’. No surprise, eh?
Many observant white patriots who are racially aware and who’s understanding of world history stretches beyond the phony version presented to us by Hollywood and the propagandistic ‘History’ channel have commented about the eerie resemblance that this Chertoff thug has with Vladimir Lenin, the Communist butcher who presided over the former Soviet Union in it’s early days.
I contend that these two guys have far more in common than just a coincidental facial similarity. I contend that Chertoff & Lenin share the exact same mental and pathological obsession to erect societies that are oriented towards totalitarianism, that mandate
laws and give supreme powers to the elites at the top that will satisfy their genetic orientation towards creating a nightmarish world that is a control-freak’s paradise.
Listen up, AR community. We are watching the descendents of the same group who created the Soviet Union in Russia repeating that horrific, evil ideology right here in North America. Chertoff and his ilk long for the USSR to live again; 9-11 was their pretext, and since then - the speed with which they have moved against our Constitution and Bill of Rights is breathtaking.
And what are most white Americans doing while all this is happening? Watching football, baseball, golf, Nascar racing, and ignoring the deliberate and systematic destruction of the nation that was bequeathed to them by their White Founding Father, that’s what.
Wake up, people. This Real ID is the Mark of the Beast. It is the ultimate control, monitoring, and tracking mechanism. RFID chips will be on them, and this gives creepy guys like Chertoff the ability to track your every move and keep tabs on you. It gives creepy guys like Chertoff the ability to ‘turn off’ your RFID chip if you happen to do or say or write anything that The Devil doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with. They’ll expand it, slowly at first, but mark my words - these control freaks will want it to include everything we do. Access to health care. Access to food, to water, to your own bank account. To purchase a firearm, or to buy ammunition for it. You won’t be able to travel, to cross state lines, to buy gas, to buy a roll of toilet paper or a stick of chewing gum.
Wake up, people. These dots are not hard to connect.
Posted by Luke at 7:41 PM on March 26
I phoned the DMV, requesting just how this law will impact a citizen of this country who was born and raised here and nobody can tell me. Since we already have to show a birth certificate and SS card to get a license, I’ve been wondering what difference this Real I.D. act is going to make. Calls to the Governor’s office have also yielded no results. Nobody knows anymore than I do. (Yes, that’s a fact. I’m not exaggerating.)
As far as I can determine, the Real I.D. act will require everybody who renews his license to prove who he is all over again, rather than allowing him to just go through the ordinary renewal process, but I’m not sure if a birth certificate and a SS card will suffice. The only thing I’ve learned in several hours of checking is that the procedure is going to cost the states a lot of money. (Why?) And there will be long lines that will take hours to process. (Why?)
Lou Dobbs mentioned on his show that he renewed his license, which he has had for 30 years, and he was told his SS number was incorrect. (But it wasn’t)
This whole affair is just another instance of where ordinary citizens are being harassed and punished by a political elite that concentrates on passing dumb politically correct laws that concentrate on everybody instead of keying in on people who are new to this country or who are here on visas, the very ones who need to prove who they are.
The only people who will have false I.D. will be the criminals and terrorists, and I’m willing to bet that after this dumb government edict is in force there will be numerous incidents of people who commit crimes who are found to have boarded planes or obtained drivers licenses using false I.D.
More and more I keep coming back to the opinion that this country is just too large and unresponsive to its citizens. It needs to be divided up into smaller nation states.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 9:18 PM on March 26
Don’t you just love it when you hear some dolt U.S Soldier claim they “die to guarantee our freedom”? First of all, the military does NOT “guarantee our freedom.” However, the point is that in this article we see the joke is on the military. What they’re dying for is to keep anti-American Fascists like Chertoff, Bush, Cheney, and Co. in power.
Posted by P Norman at 12:52 AM on March 27
Bush sent Americans over to Iraq to give those poor wretches a taste of freedom. Well how about us Mr. President?
Soon Americans will need official papers like all the prisoners behind the Iron Curtain did. It won’t be long before Homeland Security officers knock on your door at 3:AM and want to take you downtown for questioning about that naughty post on AR back in 2005. Every day it becomes more and more clear: It is the government versus the people.
Posted by P Noctura, Hold on there's sombody at the door. at 2:25 AM on March 27
Why does the Department of Homeland Insecurity even bother? Everyone knows that the Real ID will be released on the 11th of May, cracked on the 12th, and passable counterfeit copies will be in mass circulation on the 13th.
Posted by ODDL at 9:49 AM on March 27
“If Chertoff was so concerned about “homeland security,” he would focus more on closing the border with Mexico than with neocon police-state measures like Real ID.”
I disagree. While a fence would make a powerful symbol it wouldn’t keep illegals out. There’s already a fence on the boarder now near populated areas/where most illegals cross over. A high number of illegals now are just foreigners who over stay their visa. If a fense were completed, and somehow made impregnable, they could arrive by airplane, tunnel, or a short boat ride from one side of the fense to the other, or simply as tourists, or nationals, visiting relatives. Only preventing illegals from being hired, and the powerful symbol of not tolerating them/beaurocratic enforcement, can keep them out.
Posted by I should have taken the blue pill at 10:08 AM on March 27
More and more I keep coming back to the opinion that this country is just too large and unresponsive to its citizens. It needs to be divided up into smaller nation states.
Prior to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, it was.
Posted by qwerty at 12:03 PM on March 27
No wonder so many of the founding fathers wanted the US to remain a federation of states.
Posted by at 9:57 AM on March 28
