Investor's Business Daily, May 15th, 2007
Homeland Security: A leading Democrat who is holding hearings on repealing Real ID and the states that won't obey the requirements of an anti-terror tool recommended by the 9/11 Commission are refusing to learn from history.
With the addition of Oklahoma, eight states have now enacted statutes or resolutions opposing the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005, a measure passed in the wake of 9/11 and recognizing the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were able to exploit a lax and inefficient system of providing people the means of proving they are who they say.
Legislation co-sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who held hearings on the matter last week, would repeal Real ID outright. The bill also is co-sponsored by Sens. Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii, John Sununu, R-N.H. and Jon Tester, D-Mont.
Repeal has been editorially endorsed by the Wall Street Journal, which sums up opponents' arguments by calling the law a "de facto national ID card decree" and an "expensive and intrusive" measure that entrusts national security to the department of motor vehicles.
Playing the race card, the Journal says: "Real ID was always more about harassing Mexican illegals than stopping Islamic terrorists."
If you check your driver's license, it contains no deep, dark secrets other than who you are and where you live. It already is widely used as a form of identification. The problem is that the standards used to obtain one nationwide are inconsistent to the point 15f being meaningless.
Real ID merely requires that states must check that the documents presented for obtaining one are genuine. The licenses also must contain a digital photo and some form of biometric data, such as a thumbprint.
But it is not and never will be a national ID card. No one is forced to have one, and there is no federal driver's license database or will there be.
As pointed out by 9/11 Commission member John Lehman, a nonracist to our knowledge, Recommendation No. 14 of the Commission report reads: "Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for ... sources of identification, such as driver's licenses."
That is what Real ID did, even if critics treat the recommendation by the 9/11 Commission as if it was an edict from some Klan meeting.
Lehman notes that Sept. 11 pilot Ziad Jarrah, who crashed Flight 93 into a Pennsylvania field, had obtained two driver's licenses from Florida in May and a state ID from Virginia on Aug. 29, 2001.
On Sept. 9, 2001, he was stopped for speeding. Ziad, who entered the U.S. illegally at least five times, presented one of his Florida licenses. The officer had no means of checking the validity of the license and Ziad's status. To do so, Real ID opponents argue, would be "intrusive" and racist.
Ziad got a $270 ticket and the rest, as they say, is history.
Expensive? Real ID is cheaper than the next, possibly nuclear, 9/11 might be. Racist? If states want millions of illegals running around and among whom terrorists could hide (witness the Fort Dix gang), they are free to issue them any ID they want. They just won't be acceptable at airports or federal buildings.
The U.S. Constitution protects the rights of its citizens. But it also says it is the responsibility of government to protect us against our enemies, foreign and domestic.
