Plays Well With Others

Real ID Act…

As written on ARSTechica, there’s seems to be a Trojan horse in the Real ID Act and it’s possible passage. Below are some excerpts for those not willing to go to the site and read it for themselves:

Congress has crafted a completely unprecedented provision that guts the principle of judicial review by granting the DHS secretary complete and total immunity from the courts when it comes to the construction of “barriers and roads” in this one specific geographical region, and they’ve buried this provision inside a national ID card act which is itself attached to a large military appropriations bill that no Congressperson in their right mind would vote against (money for the troops and all that).

Obviously, if this passes, it’ll set a precedent. First, some obscure border region outside of San Diego, and then on to bigger and better things? As the present bill stands, if DHS built a road through an endangered wetland and committed four murders in the process, nobody could take the government to court over it. Is this the kind of unchecked power that we want Congress to have? The sky’s the limit, once the A3S2 can of worms is opened tomorrow.

As a postscript, the icing on the cake of this whole thing has to be the way that the Republican sponsors of the bill actually voted down a proposed provision in the national ID card part of the law that would prevent the government from using the Real ID database as a national database of gun owners. (A national database of gun owners is a longtime nightmare scenario of the NRA. As a lapsed NRA member and lifelong hunter, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a national gun registration database invoked as one of the first signs of the black helicopter apocalypse.)

I’d recommend reading the article and the accompanying links to get more information on this. Sounds scary to me though, that a billed sold as a National ID card bill would have a ton of provisions that have nothing to do with a National ID card. And as we all know, most congressmen/women don’t even fully read the volumes of paperwork that land on their desk in the middle of the night, that they are expected to vote on the next day. Just another pebble in the pond, that make me unable to trust our government.

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3 Responses to 'Real ID Act…'

  1. personal avatar
    Katie | 11 May 2005

    This stuff happens all the time — hiding other stuff within a piece of legislature. It’s how most of our crazy laws get passed in this country. I forget what the actual term for it is… but this is nothing new.


  2. personal avatar
    Greg | 11 May 2005

    I actually KNOW it’s nothing new. I’m fully aware that this goes on regularly. The special interests talk to their special interests, the senators make deals with other senators to sponsor a bill “if a certain little nugget” is placed deep inside of the legislature. I think most people that turn on the TV or read the newspaper are aware of how our government works.

    The point of the entry was THIS particular piece of legislature and to use it as an example of another way our government does business.

    I find it scary that the little nugget placed within this piece of legislature protects the DHS secretary within a certain geographical area. Like the person mentioned above, “if DHS built a road through an endangered wetland and committed four murders in the process, nobody could take the government to court over it.” What exactly is the point of something like that. Essentially, within this geographical area, the DHS secretary would have sole authority/decision making and wouldn’t have to worry about courts intervening. Ultimately, our system of checks and balances, as described in the Constitution would be threatened and it would set a seriously dangerous precedent.

    The concept of judicial review is actually the very thing that’s at stake in the current controversy over the Senate filibuster rules and Bush’s judicial nominees, and it has been a major bone of contention in the culture wars for the past few decades. One side says that judicial review allowed five unelected officials in black robes to strip prayer from public schools, while the other side says it allowed the judicial branch to do its job by enforcing the constitutionally mandated principle of separation of church and state; Or, one side says that judicial review could potentially enable five unelected officials in black robes to force the states to recognize gay marriage, while the other side says that it will allow the judicial branch to enforce the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution that mandates that contracts made in one state (like, say, marriage contracts made in Massachusetts) be recognized in all fifty states; and so on and so forth.

    So if judicial review is the basic mechanism that enables the Federal court system‚Äö?Ñ?Æfrom the Supreme Court on down‚Äö?Ñ?Æto rule on the constitutionality of laws and government actions, then how could it be possible for Congress to pass a law that includes language prohibiting judicial review for the law in question? In other words, if Congress could somehow exempt a law from judicial review, then the principle of judicial review would be completely gutted because they could just exempt from judicial review any law they wanted to, even if that law is blatantly unconstitutional or it violates basic human rights. Surely this isn’t possible?

    The entry wasn’t really saying “gee, how scary that they’d actually hide stuff in legistlation, because I think most people are aware that our government is a bit on the shady side. I think most people are aware of the deals being made in Washington to get legistlation passed‚Äö?Ñ?Æthe deals made out in the open, where you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You’re right‚Äö?Ñ?Æit’s nothing new.

    The point of the entry went much further, if only people took the time to read what had been linked.


  3. personal avatar
    John Johnson | 19 August 2005

    It’s called pork barrel legislation, because there were all different sorts of meat in a barrel of pork, kind of like the common understanding of a hot-dog.

    If you are interested in this topic you should read about “Sovereign Immunity.” Its an odd concept, but not an archeic one. In the last week of the most recent term of the Supreme Court (’05) the Court dealt with this concept, and stood by the assertion that “in a case involving the government’s sovereign immunity the statute in question must be strictly construed in favor of the sovereign” See Orff v. United States.


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