> In the meantime, there is some talk that this mess with Real ID *effectively* means that a more solid national ID plan won't happen at least until it's cleaned up. So it may be a good thing.

I'm a fan of privacy and generally a big civil libertarian. But I don't get what's so bad about a national ID card (so long as having it is optional).

Right now, you basically have to have government-issued ID in order to be a normal citizen. You can't get a job (not a good one, anyway) without a social security card, you need a driver's license to live effectively in much of the country, and you can't bank without at least one government-issued ID.

So why *not* create a standard national ID card? In a world where I can travel from NYC to LA in an afternoon, why should we bother having 50 different ID systems? The federal government already knows who you are and where you live. Consolidating this kind of thing just seems to make sense.

Stephen