Who Killed Real ID?

An unlikely coalition wins a post-9/11 victory for civil liberties

David Weigel from the October 2008 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

It was all that Chertoff could do. The May 11 deadline for Real ID compliance had come and gone, and all 50 states had missed it. At the Wisconsin GOP's annual convention in May, Sensenbrenner (who declined to be interviewed for this article) delivered a petulant attack against Assembly Speaker Michael Huebsch (R-West Salem) for stopping Real ID compliance in the state. "We need to act like Republicans and vote like Republicans," Sensenbrenner said. Huebsch, speaking a little later, referred to the Real ID author only obliquely. "We as Republicans," he said, "do not place our faith in government but in each other."

Bucking the System

Arizona didn't play a special role in the death of Real ID. It looked like the other rebellious states; when the momentum shifted from the go-along, get-along ID supporters to people like Karen Johnson, it merely echoed what was happening elsewhere. But it was in Arizona where Real ID opponents proved they'd achieved the upper hand in this debate.

Johnson's coalition brought together every group in the sprawling pro-privacy tent. The ACLU sent letters imploring its 3,000 state members to lobby for an opt-out bill. Bryan Turner, an organizer for the John Birch Society, talked to his own members and twisted arms on Capitol Hill. Citizens who walked into a March 2008 town hall meeting at the University of Arizona heard the ACLU and Katherine Albrecht join Johnson in making the point-by-point, they're-coming-for-your-rights case against Real ID. "It was a wonderful cross-party kind of union," remembers Mary Lunetta, the state ACLU's activism director.

How much of the rebels' victory was their own, and how much was due to the federal government's poor sales pitch? Real ID opponents readily admit that the failure of the feds to offer grants to pay for compliance proved crucial. The feds ultimately offered Arizona $90 million, but it came much too late, the day after the governor signed the noncompliance bill. Johnson doesn't think it would have been enough to change the outcome. "It wouldn't [have been] unanimous anymore," she says. "But we'd still have the majority."

Johnson and others who defeated Real ID have confronted the national security state before and lost, badly. They've watched other unfunded mandates get forced onto states as legislators and governors grumbled, then meekly assented. But this time the states didn't assent.

"This is a major shift we've been seeing," says the ACLU's Noam Biale. "We saw this kind of resistance first with the PATRIOT Act, but this was bigger, and this was more successful. There is a willingness to challenge the national security state that wasn't there six years ago." To the surprise of Biale, it was a challenge that came from libertarians and the religious right as much as—maybe more than—the left.

"We're not Russia," says Neal Kurk, the New Hampshire Republican who played a crucial role in the Real ID fight. "We're not Germany. We're not Japan. There are too many people in this country who buck the system for a scheme like this to succeed."

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

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The Wine Commonsewer|10.6.08 @ 12:07PM|#

I am delighted with this but as a cynic I have to point out that the state Driver License already functions as a national id card as does your social security number (to a lesser extent).

Certainly it's nice to see Governor Janet stand up on her hind legs and say NO, but it's a little late.

As an aside, Governor Janet is also pretty adamant about instituting Pre-K at taxpayer expense.

By the time those kids are grown retina scans will be as common as measles vaccinations.

|10.6.08 @ 12:18PM|#

It's a small victory, but dammit, we lovers of freedom and skeptics of ther feds need some few small wins.

It's worth a toast.

dave w.|10.6.08 @ 12:29PM|#

wtc7 was demolished by explosives.

|10.6.08 @ 12:33PM|#

can we get another Palin thread soon? i'm jonesin' real bad here.

|10.6.08 @ 12:57PM|#

Everytime I see anything about Real ID, I flash back to scenes at train stations in the old WWII movies.

A weasel in black leathers and jackboot, hand outstretched, penetrating dour stare, saying "Peperzzzzzzz?"

Mister DNA|10.6.08 @ 1:09PM|#

In addition to the financial incentives, the Federal gov't also failed to give REAL ID a cool name like, "The Super Freedom I Love America Fan Club Card".

|10.6.08 @ 1:13PM|#

I think if the Real ID card also replaced your ATM, credit, grocery store, gym, work ID, etc. it would have gone over better. Or maybe all that should be a chip under your arm so that you can't loose it.

|10.6.08 @ 1:14PM|#

DAMN YOU, EXTRA "O"!

Texpat|10.6.08 @ 1:28PM|#

David,

Dreier does not represent Orange County.

|10.6.08 @ 1:32PM|#

Real thorough and interesting article. Thanks.

-Anonymous

I am Spartacus|10.6.08 @ 1:42PM|#

It is only a matter of time, bigger sticks, or juicier carrots before some form of REAL ID passes.

If it only takes $150 billion in bribes to pass the bailout...

666|10.6.08 @ 1:59PM|#

REAL ID = MARK OF THE BEAST

OBAMA = the antiCHRIST ???

Naga Sadow|10.6.08 @ 2:20PM|#

I'm a bartender and I constantly check id's. Security here, however, has a cool little gadjet that runs your id. They don't even match the pictures up with the person in front of them.

|10.6.08 @ 2:22PM|#

The only ideology that defeated the Real ID act, if it's really defeated at all, was if the feds mandate it, they should pay for it. If the feds decided to pay for it, most states would drop their opposition.

|10.6.08 @ 3:32PM|#

TrickyVic | October 6, 2008, 2:22pm | #
The only ideology that defeated the Real ID act, if it's really defeated at all, was if the feds mandate it, they should pay for it. If the feds decided to pay for it, most states would drop their opposition.

Yup.

the innominate one|10.6.08 @ 5:04PM|#

good article, David.

bottom line: bipartisanship good, just this once?

|10.6.08 @ 6:57PM|#

"wtc7 was demolished by explosives."

Not unless someone invented silent explosives, sunshine.

-jcr

Ben1|10.6.08 @ 7:01PM|#

Your SSN has been your "real id" for years now. You can't bank without it; you can't get a job above menial work without it; you can't get credit without it; you can't get insurance without it... this door was closed long ago.

Can you say "Here's my ID" to the nice man in the jackboots? Of course you can. You've been doing so for years.

And if you don't, you're going to jail. Right now. And if you elect to remain silent, they'll elect to "simulate drowning" until you say what they want. Or they'll taser you. Or they'll plant drugs on you, or your kids.

This is not the government the constitution mandates. It is exercising power far beyond any authority ever granted it.

Happy discussion of real id doesn't change a thing; you're a fully enslaved subject of the royal 545 and there isn't a darned thing you can do about it.

|10.6.08 @ 7:10PM|#

Your SSN has been your "real id" for years now. You can't bank without it; you can't get a job above menial work without it; you can't get credit without it; you can't get insurance without it... this door was closed long ago.

Yep, that is true. People do not exist without the SSN. As a matter of fact, the SSN would not be useful at all (except for the government) if there were no legal tender laws. It has been the Marxian 5th point (central banking) that placed the final nail on your freedom's coffin.

|10.6.08 @ 7:52PM|#

Naga Sadow's point seems to be ignored. I live in MA, I have a barcode on my license, it is real ID ...lots of other states have this as well....Real ID is here!

"no slave is so dominated as the slave who thinks he is free."

|10.6.08 @ 10:38PM|#

Anyone surprised that stealing a trillion dollars from the middle class didn't save the economy?

Now they have "unreviewable authority", think they aren't going to use it to steal more from us?

|10.6.08 @ 11:20PM|#

It seems a better ID system will not happen until another crisis occurs.

So far the fight against terrorism, illegal immigration, identity theft, and voter fraud have been unable to push this nation to fully adopt the Real ID.

What will tip the nation into accepting it?

What if one day a nominee for President was thought to actually not be naturally born, and could not offer proof that he was?

It seems plausible that a majority of people would not want that to happen and support a better ID.

|10.7.08 @ 1:03AM|#

Is Real ID really dead? Really? From where I sit, it just looks like a pause in the action.

Was the bailout dead when the House (constitutionally required to originate all money bills) defeated it? Hardly.

Only some seismic shifts in the direction of liberty have the potential of saving us from dropping all the way to the bottom of the slippery slope. The only message powerful enough to arrest the slide, not to mention reverse it, is to kick out all the incumbents, especially or at least those who voted yes on the bailout. An even more important message would be sent if their replacements were not their opponents in the other big party, but rather third-party or independent candidates, everywhere credible alternative candidates are running.

|10.7.08 @ 2:56AM|#

This article is weird, I assume David is against real ID, but It immediately poisons the argument of those against real ID by saying right of the bat, "You know how is against Real ID, CRAZY 9/11 TRUTHERS"

It would be like a pro-McCain writer staring an article of by saying "You know who else will vote for McCain, WHITE SUPREMISISTS"

|10.7.08 @ 1:10PM|#

"""I'm a bartender and I constantly check id's. Security here, however, has a cool little gadjet that runs your id. They don't even match the pictures up with the person in front of them.""""

How do they match the person to the ID if they don't look at the photo?

|10.7.08 @ 1:11PM|#

Or is that your point?

Sheila Dean|10.7.08 @ 2:57PM|#

I kind of feel like the article is a premature memorial to an act that isn't dead yet. This act is still rooted at the federal level. Unless we repeal it the more dangerous and damaging ciphers will start to crop up. In Texas there are initiatives for drivers license checkpoints where ID's will be randomly required from anyone who is driving. Does this sound like East Berlin, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia to you? This fight is far from over. The fate of our foe has yet to feel much more than some snap back over states rights {THANK GOD!}. Please use your second win and your gloating to take on the REAL man in this fight -FEMA/DHS & your CEO in Chief.

|10.7.08 @ 3:31PM|#

Sadly, no one will give a shit until they start throwing us into ovens.

|10.8.08 @ 7:00AM|#

I think that it actually makes a lot of sense to have a national ID card. It shouldn't be in the form of a driver's license though.

Myrisa|10.8.08 @ 9:38PM|#

Unfortunately, the only place where the DHS Real-ID program is being implemented is in Puerto Rico, a US territory in which, ironically, the governor (D), who has been indicted with 24 counts of federal crimes and claims persecution for political reasons, hailed the application of the Real-ID scheme at the local government's expense.

|10.9.08 @ 2:40PM|#

It smells like... Victory.

Mark Lerner|10.9.08 @ 5:18PM|#

My name is Mark Lerner. I am the Co-Founder of the Stop Real ID Act Coalition which is comprised of many people including lawmakers. We are non partisan. We take exception to the article because it provides too many inaccurate statements and further does not discuss the fact that Real ID is international not just national. We would ask that the public and lawmakers read our latest update on our home page. It not only provides information that the "article" does not address but facts that the public will be outraged about. We supply the substantiating documents to support each fact we present. The "fox" is coming back in sheep's clothing. We are going state to state and working with citizens. groups and lawmakers in opposition to Real ID and SB 717. Some of the lawmakers quoted in the article are part of our Coalition. I was asked by our members to supply this response. We ask that each person visit our web-site at www.stoprealidcoalition.com for facts versus an overview that lacks a great deal of information and would lead readers to make wrong assumptions. Thank you

Mark Lerner
co-founder Stop Real ID Act Coalition

drudge|10.10.08 @ 11:08PM|#

"Not unless someone invented silent explosives, sunshine." ???

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=explosions+wtc+7&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#

wake up dumbass

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