http://www.dhs.gov/...
The Department of Homeland Security scares the crap out of me. I am a Polish immigrant, the last country that invaded my privacy this badly called itself the Fatherland.
Living in the United States for 17 of my 23 years I have felt the country steadily get sucked into the self-reinforcing whirlpool of fear-panic-terror that Roosevelt, Jefferson and many other patriots warn(ed) us about. As a legal alien, a permanent resident, I watched as my status in this country turned from assumed innocent to assumed guilty. The government can jail me for a month without bringing charges, they can deem me a threat and send me back to Poland on a whim.
Having this hanging over my head is pretty bad and it makes me particularly sensitive to these steady in-roads into the beautiful wilderness of America that still (barely) survives to keep people like me safe and anonymous and without the feeling of being tracked or liable to be thrown out. The Dept. of Homeland Security, by enforcing the REAL ID Act which is one recommendation of the 9/11 commission, is creating guidelines to make a National ID a reality. Internal Passports. Papers. The very thing my parents and I left in Eastern Bloc Poland to come here for freedom from even the possibility of these everyday tyrannies!
To THINK that we could possibly ask this citizenry to accept this stomping of States rights, of individual rights, of taking away the right to anonymity and the freedom it gives us to express ourselves is a damned shame. Please, fellow Democrats, Progressives, Moderates and even the Conservatives that read this, contact your electeds and tell them HELL NO TO THE REAL ID ACT!
PROTECT YOURSELVES!
There is a lot of talk about how the first REAL step to security that the Resnuglicans did not take, but the Democrats should, is implementing all the 9/11 commission recommendations. Well I, for one, think that REAL security starts by keeping our society FREE at all costs and never letting a State Apparatus develop!
PLEASE!