Lawmakers Trying To Get Rid Of Real ID For Good

by Rob Poindexter - April 6th 2011 11:16pm - Read more Local News

(Augusta, Maine)

Republicans, Democrats, and Independents stood together Wednesday in Augusta to speak out in favor of a proposal to get rid of parts of the Federal Real ID Act implemented in Maine under former Governor John Baldacci.

The federal law would eventually link every state drivers license and ID cards to a federal database but only if the federal government can get all states on board.

Real ID would also require facial recognition or retinal scans in order to get a license or state ID.

Kagan Confirmed for Supreme Court – Vote Count Breakdown 63-37

Five Republicans voted for unashamed socialist progressive Kagan. Certain so-called Conservative Republicans betrayed us: Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) and Richard Lugar (Indiana). Not sure rather New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg, who also voted for Kagan, is supposed to be a conservative on not (forgive me for not being up to date on his conservative status).

And it didn't surprise me at all that Liberal Progressive Democrats..er I mean Republicans from Maine Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins voted for Kagan.

ALL THE OFFICIAL SENATE STATS ARE BELOW.

Real Conservative Republicans in Indiana, New Hampshire, Maine (Good Luck) and especially in South Carolina need to fight hard to replace these Senators with real Conservatives.

You might say why especially in South Carolina? Isn't Lindsey Graham usually a pretty decent conservative?

The Answer is  a resounding 'NO'  Lindsey is one of the master minds, partnering with Liberal Progressive Chuck Schumer and the White House, to bring us a National ID, with an RFID chip in it, that can be tracked by anyone, including the government, identity thieves, corporations, ect.

After a similar law, the 'Real ID Act' was rejected by a large number of states, those who wish to track and control you have come out with a Lindsey Graham, Schumer and the White House re-branding of the 'Real ID'.

With US citizens so worried about illegal immigration they (Graham and co-horts) are going to stick this in the new Immigration Reform Bill and sell it as the only way to stop the influx of illegals; to make every citizen have one to get a job, board a train, get a bank account, get free government hand outs, get Health Insurance and on and on and on.

This goes against everything our country stands for, privacy, the right to be left alone

Republicans, Conservatives and even many Democrats, used to be against any kind of papers please kind of National ID.

Shame on you Lindsey Graham.

South Carolina Republicans, Conservatives, Democrats, Independents and Libertarians vote that bum out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Final count: 63-37. Five Republicans and one Democrat defected.

111th Congress: Senate Vote #229 (Aug 5, 2010)

Confirming Elena Kagan of Massachusetts, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S.

Number:	Senate Vote #229 in 2010 [primary source: senate.gov]
Date:	Aug 5, 2010 3:30PM
Result:	Nomination Confirmed

	Totals			Democrats	Republicans	Independents	All Votes
			Needed To Win
Yea:	63	(63%)		56	5	2
Nay:	37	(37%)		1	36	0
Present:	0	(0%)		0	0	0
Not Voting:	0	(0%)		0	0	0
Required:	Simple Majority of 100 votes (=51 votes) (Vacancies in Congress will affect vote totals.)

Vote Details

Standard Projection

Horizontal bars indicate the two senators from a state voted differently.

Vote	State	Representative
Alabama
Nay	AL	Sessions, Jefferson [R]
Nay	AL	Shelby, Richard [R]
Alaska
Yea	AK	Begich, Mark [D]
Nay	AK	Murkowski, Lisa [R]
Arizona
Nay	AZ	Kyl, Jon [R]
Nay	AZ	McCain, John [R]
Arkansas
Yea	AR	Lincoln, Blanche [D]
Yea	AR	Pryor, Mark [D]
California
Yea	CA	Boxer, Barbara [D]
Yea	CA	Feinstein, Dianne [D]
Colorado
Yea	CO	Bennet, Michael [D]
Yea	CO	Udall, Mark [D]
Connecticut
Yea	CT	Dodd, Christopher [D]
Yea	CT	Lieberman, Joseph [I]
Delaware
Yea	DE	Carper, Thomas [D]
Yea	DE	Kaufman, Edward [D]
Florida
Nay	FL	LeMieux, George [R]
Yea	FL	Nelson, Bill [D]
Georgia
Nay	GA	Chambliss, Saxby [R]
Nay	GA	Isakson, John [R]
Hawaii
Yea	HI	Akaka, Daniel [D]
Yea	HI	Inouye, Daniel [D]
Idaho
Nay	ID	Crapo, Michael [R]
Nay	ID	Risch, James [R]
Illinois
Yea	IL	Burris, Roland [D]
Yea	IL	Durbin, Richard [D]
Indiana
Yea	IN	Bayh, Evan [D]
Yea	IN	Lugar, Richard [R]
Iowa
Nay	IA	Grassley, Charles [R]
Yea	IA	Harkin, Thomas [D]
Kansas
Nay	KS	Brownback, Samuel [R]
Nay	KS	Roberts, Pat [R]
Kentucky
Nay	KY	Bunning, Jim [R]
Nay	KY	McConnell, Mitch [R]
Louisiana
Yea	LA	Landrieu, Mary [D]
Nay	LA	Vitter, David [R]
Maine
Yea	ME	Collins, Susan [R]
Yea	ME	Snowe, Olympia [R]
Maryland
Yea	MD	Cardin, Benjamin [D]
Yea	MD	Mikulski, Barbara [D]
Massachusetts
Nay	MA	Brown, Scott [R]
Yea	MA	Kerry, John [D]
Michigan
Yea	MI	Levin, Carl [D]
Yea	MI	Stabenow, Debbie Ann [D]
Minnesota
Yea	MN	Franken, Al [D]
Yea	MN	Klobuchar, Amy [D]
Mississippi
Nay	MS	Cochran, Thad [R]
Nay	MS	Wicker, Roger [R]
Missouri
Nay	MO	Bond, Christopher [R]
Yea	MO	McCaskill, Claire [D]
Montana
Yea	MT	Baucus, Max [D]
Yea	MT	Tester, Jon [D]
Nebraska
Nay	NE	Johanns, Mike [R]
Nay	NE	Nelson, Ben [D]
Nevada
Nay	NV	Ensign, John [R]
Yea	NV	Reid, Harry [D]
New Hampshire
Yea	NH	Gregg, Judd [R]
Yea	NH	Shaheen, Jeanne [D]
New Jersey
Yea	NJ	Lautenberg, Frank [D]
Yea	NJ	Menendez, Robert [D]
New Mexico
Yea	NM	Bingaman, Jeff [D]
Yea	NM	Udall, Tom [D]
New York
Yea	NY	Gillibrand, Kirsten [D]
Yea	NY	Schumer, Charles [D]
North Carolina
Nay	NC	Burr, Richard [R]
Yea	NC	Hagan, Kay [D]
North Dakota
Yea	ND	Conrad, Kent [D]
Yea	ND	Dorgan, Byron [D]
Ohio
Yea	OH	Brown, Sherrod [D]
Nay	OH	Voinovich, George [R]
Oklahoma
Nay	OK	Coburn, Thomas [R]
Nay	OK	Inhofe, James [R]
Oregon
Yea	OR	Merkley, Jeff [D]
Yea	OR	Wyden, Ron [D]
Pennsylvania
Yea	PA	Casey, Robert [D]
Yea	PA	Specter, Arlen [D]
Rhode Island
Yea	RI	Reed, John [D]
Yea	RI	Whitehouse, Sheldon [D]
South Carolina
Nay	SC	DeMint, Jim [R]
Yea	SC	Graham, Lindsey [R]
South Dakota
Yea	SD	Johnson, Tim [D]
Nay	SD	Thune, John [R]
Tennessee
Nay	TN	Alexander, Lamar [R]
Nay	TN	Corker, Bob [R]
Texas
Nay	TX	Cornyn, John [R]
Nay	TX	Hutchison, Kay [R]
Utah
Nay	UT	Bennett, Robert [R]
Nay	UT	Hatch, Orrin [R]
Vermont
Yea	VT	Leahy, Patrick [D]
Yea	VT	Sanders, Bernard [I]
Virginia
Yea	VA	Warner, Mark [D]
Yea	VA	Webb, Jim [D]
Washington
Yea	WA	Cantwell, Maria [D]
Yea	WA	Murray, Patty [D]
West Virginia
Yea	WV	Goodwin, Carte [D]
Yea	WV	Rockefeller, John [D]
Wisconsin
Yea	WI	Feingold, Russell [D]
Yea	WI	Kohl, Herbert [D]
Wyoming
Nay	WY	Barrasso, John [R]
Nay	WY	Enzi, Michael [R]

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2010-229

National ID: The Time to Resist is Now

23. APR, 2010

by John Whitehead

As technology grows more sophisticated and the government and its corporate allies further refine their methods of keeping tabs on the American people, those of us who treasure privacy increasingly find ourselves engaged in a struggle to maintain our freedoms in the midst of the modern surveillance state.

Just consider the many ways we’re already being monitored and tracked: through our Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; by way of our correspondence and communications devices – email, phone calls and mobile phones; through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing. Data corporations are capturing vast caches of personal information on you so that airports, retailers, police and other government authorities can instantly identify and track you. Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, banks and other financial institutions must verify the identities of new customers and make such records of customer transactions available to the police and government officials upon request.

In recent years, this information glut has converged into a mandate for a national ID card, which came to a head with Congress’ passage of the REAL ID Act in 2005. REAL ID requires states to issue machine-readable drivers’ licenses containing a wealth of personal data. However, because the REAL ID Act has been opposed by many states due to its cost and implementation, we have yet to be subjected to a nationwide implementation of a national ID card. That may all change depending on what happens with the immigration reform bill now before Congress.

A centerpiece of the immigration bill as proposed by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a requirement that all U.S. workers, citizen and resident alike, be required to obtain and carry biometric Social Security cards (national ID cards under a different name) in order to work within the United States. Attempting to appease critics of a national ID card, Schumer and Graham insist that “no government database would house everyone’s information” and that the “cards would not contain any private information, medical information, or tracking devices.” However, those claims are blatantly false. Indeed, this proposed biometric card is nothing more than an end-run around opposition to a national ID card.

Civil and privacy rights advocates, as well as liberal-, conservative-, and libertarian-leaning organizations, have long raised concerns that a national ID card would enable the government to track citizens and, thus, jeopardize the privacy rights of Americans. President Reagan likened a 1981 proposal to the biblical “mark of the beast,” and President Clinton dismissed a similar plan because it smacked of Big Brother.

Most recently, The Rutherford Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union, along with a host of other organizations, voiced their opposition to the biometric ID card. In a letter to both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Judiciary Committees, Senate Finance Committee, House Ways and Means Committee and the White House, this coalition of groups declared that such a national ID card would “not only violate privacy by helping to consolidate data and facilitate tracking of individuals, it would bring government into the very center of our lives by serving as a government permission slip needed by everyone in order to work. As happened with Social Security cards decades ago, use of such ID cards would quickly spread and be used for other purposes – from travel to voting to gun ownership.” And the national biometric ID card would “require the creation of a bureaucracy that combines the worst elements of the Transportation Security Administration and state Motor Vehicle Departments.”

At a minimum, these proposed cards will contain a memory device that stores distinct – and highly personal – physical or biological information unique to the cardholder such as fingerprints, retina scan information, a mapping of the veins on the top of your hand, and so on. Eventually, other information, such as personal business and financial data, will probably also be stored on these cards. For the cards to be effective, an information storage system and central database, which will be managed by the government and its corporate handlers, will be required. That means a lot of taxpayer dollars will be used to create the ultimate tracking device to be used against American citizens.

As journalist Megan Carpentier reports, “The federal government wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and force employees and employers still suffering from a recession to do the same, to create and make accessible to every employer a national database of the fingerprints of all Americans from the time they are 14 years old. And they want to do it in order to keep an estimated 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants – less than 4 percent of the total population of the United States – from accessing the job market.” Under threat of substantial fines by the government and in what promises to be a cumbersome, bureaucratic process, employers will have to purchase ID card scanning devices (or visit their local DMV) in order to scan the cards of every individual they wish to hire before that individual can be employed. What this amounts to, essentially, is a troubling system in which all Americans would have to get clearance from the federal government in order to get a job.

Furthermore, the law’s requirement that machine-readable technology be incorporated into the card opens the door for radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to be placed on the cards. RFID is a tiny, automatic identification system that enables data – in this case the private information of American citizens – to be transmitted by a portable device. This will provide the government with unprecedented access to American citizens’ personal information. In addition, RFID tags emit radio frequency signals that allow the government to track the movement of the cards, as well as the cardholders. In other words, wherever your card goes, so do the government monitors.

When all is said and done, the adoption of a national biometric ID card serves one purpose only: to provide the government with the ultimate control over the American people. As one commentator has remarked, this is a “naked government power grab.”

The time to resist is now. If we don’t, eventually, we will all have to possess one of these cards in order to be a functioning citizen in American society. Failing to have a biometric card will render you a non-person for all intents and purposes. Your whole life will depend on this card – your ability to work, travel, buy, sell, access health care, and so on.

What we used to call science fiction is now reality. And whether a national ID card is the mark of the Beast or the long arm of Big Brother, the outcome remains the same.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest book The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks) is now available.

Copyright © 2010 The Rutherford Institute

If you enjoyed this post:

Click Here to Get the Free Tenth Amendment Center Newsletter,

Or make a donation to help keep the tenth amendment center site active: