The Militant Libertarian

I'm pissed off and I'm a libertarian. What else you wanna know?

Thursday, May 12, 2005

National ID

From The Advocates For Self-Government

National ID is Here; Some States Threaten to Rebel

Last issue we reported on the REAL ID Act, a police-state federal bill that would in effect turn state drivers licenses into national ID cards, as well as providing for the use of the cards to collect a national database of information on citizens.

The bad news: despite protests by hundreds of civil liberties groups representing millions of American citizens, the Senate passed the bill unanimously today. (Republican backers of the bill had added it to a must-pass emergency military spending bill, thus bypassing debate and making it all but unstoppable.) President Bush, whose spokesmen once said he "does not support a national ID card," strongly backs the bill and has promised to sign it into law.

The (sort of) good news: many state governments are protesting the bill. Most of the concern isn’t over the civil liberties nightmare, sadly. Instead, states are worried that implementing the bill will cost them an enormous amount of money -- potentially hundreds of millions of dollars -- and make getting a driver's license extremely difficult for many law-abiding citizens and a headache for state officials.

Some state governors are threatening to challenge it in court. Some state governments even say they will disobey the law.

"Governors are looking at all their options. If more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing this unfunded federal mandate," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National Governors Association.

Under the law, residents of states that fail to adopt the new national ID won't be able to board planes, enter federally protected buildings, get most jobs, or receive Social Security. (So much for Republican concerns about unfunded federal mandates, limited federal government, and states rights.)

Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), the most outspoken opponent of the national ID in Congress, has described it this way:

“This REAL ID Act establishes a massive, centrally-coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, Social Security number, and physical characteristics. The legislation also grants open-ended authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to require biometric information on IDs in the future. This means your harmless looking driver’s license could contain a retina scan, fingerprints, DNA information, or radio frequency technology ... National ID cards will be used to track the law-abiding masses, not criminals.”

A national ID has come to America, and the primary opposition is by state lawmakers who are worried that it might cost too much to implement. It’s a sad day -- and another indication of the desperate need for a strong libertarian movement in America.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2005

States Balk At National ID Card Plan

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_6695.shtml
By SUZANNE GAMBOA

States are threatening to challenge in court and even disobey new orders from Congress to start issuing more uniform driver's licenses and verify the citizenship or legal status of people getting them.

There is concern among some states that they'll get stuck with a large tab to pay for implementing the new rules and that getting a driver's license will become a bigger headache for law-abiding residents.

"Governors are looking at all their options. If more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing this unfunded federal mandate," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National Governors Association. A Huckabee aide said the options include court action.

States fear the new rules may force applicants to make more than one trip to motor vehicle departments, once to provide documents such as birth certificates that states must verify and a second time to pick up the license, state officials said.

"What passed is something that will be an enormous amount of work and it's questionable what it's going to yield," said Democrat Matt Dunlap, Maine's secretary of state. "Is it going to yield national security or is it going to be hassle for people already complying with the law?"

The immigration requirements were attached to an $82 billion spending package for military operations and construction in Iraq and Afghanistan that the House passed last week. The Senate is expected to vote this week and send the bill to President Bush.

"We'd like to work with people to implement the needed reform and will be very disappointed if these groups thwart these important rules," said Jeff Lungren, spokesman for Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who wrote the new requirements.

Sensenbrenner said last week that waiting a little longer in line is "a small price to pay" to prevent future terrorism.

Read the rest at: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_6695.shtml

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Monday, May 09, 2005

The System Has Failed

My Review of Megadeth's The System Has Failed

To put it as ambigously as possible, I'm both disappointed and impressed with this album. I'm disappointed because the music isn't really all that great...especially compared to Megadeth's past stuff. On the other hand, it appears that they're experimenting some and trying to change their boundaries. That's not so bad. There is still some great music on this album.

I'm also glad to see this album is very politically-motivated.

The album's title, cover art, and song titles seem to sum it up: The System Has Failed is the title; the cover art depicts Eddie (the band's mascot) handing out verdicts of "not guilty" to various politicians in return for bribes they're holding in their hands for him; and the album includes song titles like I Know Jack (Kennedy), Truth Be Told, Of Mice and Men, and so forth. Most of the album's lyrics are political in nature and depict a world in which our government has failed.

You'll hear both "Die Dead Enough" and "Of Mice and Men" on the radio right now. I suspect you'll hear at least one more before their next album is released (probably sometime in late 2005 or early 2006).

If you're a fan of Megadeth already, you'll like this album, but it probably won't get the play-time your others do. If you're not a fan of heavy metal music, you definitely won't like this album at all. You can listen to song samples from Amazon.com by clicking the link above, left.

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Sunday, May 08, 2005

Hypocritical Laissez Faire Books

My friend Fran has just posted an important piece regarding the refusal of Laissez Faire Books to carry a book by a prominent libertarian writer. You can read that piece on Fran's blog: http://freewest.blogspot.com

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