DHS Secretary Chertoff on REAL ID's "COUNTLESS OTHER" USES.

READ WHERE DO YOU PLACE YOUR DISTRUST?

Friday, June 15, 2007

Good News & Bad News from Tennessee

The Rogersville Review reports that Tennessee's senator, Lamar Alexander fights federal Real ID mandate. This is good. But Alexander doesn't seem to get the picture quite right. For Alexander, the issue is money:
“When I was Tennessee’s governor I used to get mad whenever Congress came up with a big idea and then sent me the bill to pay for it,” Alexander said. “This Real ID Act will take a real hit out of state’s pocketbooks unless we step up and pay for Congress’ big idea ourselves.”

However, it is obvious to me that our senator is not thinking in terms of freedom, our Constitution, federalism, or limited government. He is open to using biometrics on Social Security cards and to the concept of a national id card. He seems to miss entirely that the REAL ID Act is wrong--cheap or expensive.

But I will acknowledge that any resistance to a bad idea is helpful. But our leadership would be better if they remembered what true conservativism is all about: pursuing and protecting God-given rights of the individual from a power-greedy state. (Freedoms are lost in our philosophy long before they are lost in our practice.)

Tennessee's senate has opposed the REAL ID Act. This is also good.

My hope is Tennessee will draw good conclusions from good thinking.

It's not just about the money.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The feds didn't put any money on this one just so that the majority of the fight against it was for funding. They can then swoop in at the last minute with money and everyone is happy. No, really. Think about it in perspective to the war on terror. Funding the States on this would be a drop in the bucket if they really thought this was the silver bullet in the war on terrorism like DHS says it is. We'll all be so happy that we got some money that we won't remember we just got paid off for a national ID card.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Alexander is against it for the wrong reasons because he is very much for it. He is, after all, a member of the CFR which promotes the North American Union and using RFID chips for commerce and marketing. See http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55776

John R. said...

I'm not into the NAU or the CFR conspiracy thinking...

I'm against REAL ID because its a bad idea on its own merits and stands contrary to what the founding of the country was all about.

It's just a bad idea by itself.

JR

Anonymous said...

It's definitely the wrong thing on it's own but it is also a part of a much larger issue.

I do believe in the CFR working to globalize the government while Americans are asleep at the wheel but they're finding out that there are many not sleeping.

We need a constitutional government that gets rid of the waste and oversight that doesn't belong to it.