SALON

Friday, Apr 30, 2010 7:01 PM UTC

Harry Reid’s plan to boost Glenn Beck’s ratings

What could possibly go wrong with a Democratic proposal to issue mandatory national ID cards?

By

Topics: Immigration, War Room, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Harry Reid, Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senate,

Harry Reid's plan to boost Glenn Beck's ratings Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to go big on immigration reform. With Arizona’s draconian new immigration law in the headlines, it should be a great way to split the Republicans and rally the Democratic base. Unless it all just becomes a huge shitstorm over biometric national ID cards.

Democrat Chuck Schumer and heroically whiny Republican moderate Lindsey Graham recently spent weeks hammering out vague areas of agreement on the immigration thing so that Republicans could announce that they made a good-faith effort at bipartisanship — even though it was basically predetermined that Lindsey would get upset over some bullshit thing or another and back out. (They ended up with an Op-Ed and Lindsey immediately threw a tantrum when he learned that Reid might want to do immigration before climate change.)

One thing Reid and Schumer agreed on was the necessity of a new national biometric Social Security card for every American worker, because national ID cards hit the sweet spot where Democratic government overreach and Republican police state affection overlap.

And here it is, in the “Conceptual Outline” of the Democratic immigration reform proposal, with an Orwellian name and a laughably inept attempt to make it not quite sound like a proposal for a mandatory biometric national ID card.

This is just fantastic politics. As White Populism and the new Know-Nothingism sweep America, Harry Reid is going to stake the political future of the Democrats on both helping immigrants and forcing those few citizens who still have jobs to register their fingerprints with the federal government. (Not that I’m criticizing good policy because it’s “bad optics.” I’m firmly on the side of the ACLU and the Cato Institute on this one.)

Ezra Klein says it’s odd that the right-wing cranks who hate immigrants the most are also the ones most likely to oppose the creation of biometric national ID cards to determine citizenship status, but it really makes perfect sense: only illegals should be trapped like grasshoppers, microchipped, and sent “home.” An ID card for American citizens is fascism.

Senate Democrats are also still in the middle financial reform, and some nutty idealists wanted to tackle climate legislation before their inevitable crushing loss in the midterms, on account of we will all basically die if nothing huge is done to fix that mess very soon. (They also need to ratify an arms treaty and confirm a Supreme Court nominee. Good luck, Harry!)

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 33 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
32 points33 points | comment
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
27 points28 points | 1 comment
vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
6 points7 points | comment
vote
Experts: Fox News spying scandal a game-changer - I think that crackdown is ideologically driven and I think it’s hard to come to a different conclusion given the vigor with which this justice department has gone after people. So I think it is about a method of control that is badly misplaced.
3 points4 points | 6 comments
vote
So apparently the American government can weaponize the weather...
4 points5 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations