CRAIGforCONGRESS

Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

  
 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2010
THREATS TO CIVIL LIBERTIES
National I.D. Cards



The 112th Congress should:
  • Resist all calls for a national I.D. card.

The Third Amendment of the Constitution says:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Joseph Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution 3 : § 1893, writes:

§ 1893. This provision speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion. The billetting of soldiers in time of peace upon the people has been a common resort of arbitrary princes, and is full of inconvenience and peril. In the petition of right (3 Charles I.), it was declared by parliament to be a great grievance.

The Founders' Constitution
Volume 5, Amendment III, Document 12
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIIs12.html

If a man's home is his castle, then so is his wallet, and the government treads on this right when it demands the quartering of government cards on our person. The government may as well require us to be escorted at all times by a soldier who will verify our right to exist within this nation's borders.


Repeal the REAL ID ActThe REAL ID Act is a bad law passed under false pretenses. It was rejected three separate times by the U.S. Senate, and was only passed because it was added to a larger bill containing disaster relief and funding for Iraq. The Senate didn't want it, and the American people don't want it either. But the Republican majority leadership in Congress imposed it on us, and so now we have to fight to get it repealed.
    
The REAL ID Act creates a centralized federal database of personal information about all Americans. Decisions about the exact nature and scope of this program will be made by unelected bureaucrats in the Executive Branch. It seems inevitable that biometric information and electronic tracking tags will be included at some point. No one intends a bad use for this system today, but it is inevitable that it will be used in bad ways in the future.
     We are promised increased personal security in return for laying this new "foundation stone" for the creation of a future police state. But those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither, and will have neither.
     Click here to ask Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act.

Next: The Expanding Federal Police Power