A national ID? Gimme a break!

HereÂ’s a case where theory and practice have collided to produce a royal mess.

With the U.S. House of Representatives approving the concept of a national ID card, a presidential signature is a foregone conclusion. But itÂ’s a bad bill and itÂ’s going to be a bad law.

IÂ’m all for making it as hard as possible for al-Qaida and any like-minded collection of morons to infiltrate the system though the use of false documents. But the Real ID Act is just another knee-jerk reaction to the more complex reality of our times. WhatÂ’s more, it raises civil libertarian concerns about the potential for abuse.

Truth be told, this isnÂ’t the first time that the U.S. government has reached for a quick fix to deal with internal instability. God bless Uncle Sam ,but there are times when the old guy temporarily hits the panic button.

During the early days of the republic, the Federalists, fearing imminent foreign invasion, rammed through the Alien & Sedition Acts, an outrageously silly piece of legislation that later got repealed when Thomas Jefferson replaced John Adams as president.

In the aftermath of World War I, a "Red Scare" gripped the nation. The general hysteria fostered ripe conditions for a widespread crackdown on domestic dissent during the so-called Palmer Raids. (It so happened that Attorney General Mitchell Palmer was only able to put his plan into action after J. Edgar HooverÂ’s FBI had put together a database with some 150,000 names.)

During the McCarthy era, political witch hunts thrived as the nation caught a bad case of Cold War fever.

It was no picnic for the people living back then--and that was when personal privacy was still reasonably intact. Just think what might have ensued if earlier generations had our current arsenal of technology at their disposal.