Maybe I should start voting absentee from Milwaukee

Hopefully I'll have time to write more on this later, but for now all I want to say is that my Congressman sucks.

No Real Debate for Real ID

Hundreds of civil liberties groups, immigrant support groups and government associations oppose the Real ID Act, a piece of legislation that critics say would produce a de facto national ID card, cost states millions of dollars and punish undocumented immigrants.

Yet despite widespread opposition to the bill, it passed through the House last week and is expected to easily pass through the Senate on Tuesday.

The legislation is raising questions not only about privacy and costs but about the ways in which critical legislation gets passed in Congress.

Critics, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, say lawmakers slipped the Real ID Act into the relatively uncontroversial spending bill in order to avoid a congressional debate over the ID measure.

"The legislation was created in the backrooms of Congress without hearings and without any real understanding or thought about what was being created," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program.

The Real ID Act, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), responds to recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission to make it more difficult for terrorists and undocumented immigrants to obtain legitimate identification documents and travel freely around the country. The bill also is designed to make it difficult for anyone to forge identification documents and use them for criminal purposes.

A spokesman from Sensenbrenner's office did not return a call for comment in time for publication. But proponents of the legislation say they are simply implementing recommendations that the 9/11 Commission wanted.

Full Wired.com Article