No Internal Passports
For those who may not be familiar, the Real ID Act was passed last year - a bill which basically creates a de facto national ID by federalizing driver's licenses and other identification cards. In my opinion (and many others), this is a Very Bad Thing™ for a variety of reasons, including:
- immense cost
- decreased privacy and increased chance of identity theft
- police state nature of a national ID, not to mention...
- no increase in security for Americans from terrorist bees
Anyway, I was pleased to hear that the New Hampshire House passed a bill that would remove them from the Real ID Act. New Hampshire's governor has already said he will sign it, so all that's really left is for the state Senate to pass it. The bill is slated for a vote tomorrow, May 4th. This could be an important step; I'd like to see NH reject the Real ID and lead other states in doing the same, ultimately repealing it altogether. We don't need a national ID in America.
If this issue is important to you, I'd encourage you to contact the NH state senators (what's it matter if you're not from there? you can still urge support). More info about that over at DownsizeDC and at Granite State ID.
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As far as all things good and small government, NH rocks... I'd love to move there... No income tax or sales tax (just property tax, doh), no seatbelt laws, no traffic cameras (they said if you break the law there should be a cop there doing their job and cameras were basically a way robbing the people)...
I think they do a pretty good job of living up to their state motto of “Live free or die”.
Now that's a motto.