Radly Balko, via Arthur at Light of Reason and Instapundit:

On walking, quacking, swimming, and crapping like a duck...

Rep. David Dreier's new bill will not create a new national identification card.

Oh sure, it will add a magnetic identification strip and identifying photo to your existing Social Security card, and you'll be required to present the new card for identification any time you want to apply for a new job. At that point, your prospective employer would then check the identification listed on your card against a national database which identifies eligible employees.

How utterly ridiculous. In a copycat move reminiscent of Jerry Falwell going after the teletubbies, Evangelist James Dobson is calling on schools to reject a video by a non-profit group that includes the cartoon character SpongeBob on the grounds that it "promotes the acceptance of homosexuality."

The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and 100 TV cartoon stars. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks to promote the nation's healing process.

SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was "outed" by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise was popular with gays. His creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said at the time that although SpongeBob was an oddball, he thought of all the characters as asexual.

Bump and Update: This is the lead story on the Denver local news. Ahead of the Inaugural.

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Original Post (this morning)

Simply outrageous. For over a year, Crist Mortuary in Boulder, Colorado has had a secret deal with a local Catholic church to stash fetal tissue from an abortion clinic that the mortuary had picked up for cremation. Now, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the church is going to hold a burial ceremony and bury the tissue in its cemetary. The mortuary's general manager is Michael Greenwood.

by TChris

Americans have long opposed the concept of a national identity card. Privacy advocates are concerned that new federal standards for drivers licenses will create a de facto national ID card, "centralizing information that can be misused - by letting the government track the whereabouts of innocent people, for instance."

The biggest danger is that, as the nation becomes more security-minded, and relies more on driver's licenses as ID, our society changes, [Marv] Johnson said. "You just wind up being a nation where you have to show your papers to go anyplace. That's something the American people have never put up with."

States and the federal government will be wrestling with the content and design of the license for at least a year-and-a-half before the requirements take effect. States can opt out of the federal requirements, but the state issued licenses would then be useless as identification for any federal purpose, including boarding an airplane.

The FBI retires Carnivore , its controversial internet surveillance system.

Before the cheers go up, you should know this just means that the FBI is now using commerical products to conduct internet surveillance. [link via Raw Story]

Where's the shredder. This isn't right.

If you're among the millions of Americans who took airline flights in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI probably knows about it - and possibly where you stayed, whom you traveled with, what credit card you used and even whether you ordered a kosher meal.

The bureau is keeping 257.5 million records on people who flew on commercial airlines from June through September 2001 in its permanent investigative database, according to information obtained by a privacy group and made available to The Associated Press.

What might the F.B.I. do with the information?

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling that the U.S. cannot continue to indefinitely detain persons who have been ordered deported but whose home countries won't take them back, some experts wonder whether Immigrations and Customs will comply with the ruling. Mark Dow, author of American Gulag: Inside America's Immigration Prisons, notes in the comments to our post,

The question remains: Who will make sure the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will comply with the law?

The recent Mariel ruling was based on the court's 2001 ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis that the government could not detain certain legal immigrants indefinitely, but a May 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the immigration service has failed to comply fully with that ruling. Some 2000 immigrants effected by the new ruling are scattered in jails and prisons around the country. Congress must immediately establish an independent body to ensure that ICE complies with the new -- and old -- laws.

Ok, this is carrying the law and order thing way too far. Charter school officials in Texas strip-searched ten 11 and 12 year olds, "down to their underwear," looking for a ten dollar bill another student reported missing. Can you imagine if it were drugs they were looking for? Cavity searches, for sure.

This wasn't even in a backwater town. It was 40 miles from Houston. [link via Last One Speaks.]

There are 790 men in Truro, MA and police want to take the DNA of all of them to try and solve a murder. They want to know who last had sex with the victim.

"The person we're looking for is the one who deposited the DNA" by having sex with Ms. Worthington before she died, Sergeant Perry said. "We're not saying that this is the killer. What we're saying is we need to talk to this person, who may be just the last person to see her alive."

by TChris

During the 25 years he's worked for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Kevin Harrington has worn a turban. The Sikh subway driver is now being told he'll be demoted to a job in the yards if he defies a directive to wear an MTA badge on his turban.

"I feel wearing the patch violates my religious freedom," Harrington, 53, told The New York Daily News. "The turban is a sacred space, so it's like asking a priest to wear a logo on his vestments."

Harrington's lawyer, Amardeep Singh, said his client had always worn the turban in his 25 years on the job, but it was only after "9/11 that the agency tried to get its Sikh and Muslim employees to stop wearing their turbans and hijabs."

Employees who don't wear turbans presumably affix their badges to other articles of clothing. It's difficult to imagine a nondiscriminatory rationale for denying Harrington the same opportunity. A Justice Department lawsuit, filed in September, should put an end to MTA's infringement of Harrington's right to practice his religion. Until then, Harrington is complying (albeit grudgingly) with MTA's demands.

"It just feels stupid," he said. "I feel like a church has been desecrated."

by TChris

Last June, TalkLeft asked why the Department of Homeland Security is resisting the asylum application of mentally challenged teenager Malik Jarno. Jarno's father was arrested and tortured before he was killed in 1998. Jarno fears that he will suffer the same fate if he's forced to return to Guinea. (More TalkLeft background here.)

Last week, Immigration Judge Joan Churchill — who "grants asylum applications at a significantly lower rate than other immigration judges" — rejected Jarno's asylum request. But the story might not end so unhappily.

U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-York, has asked the federal government to allow Mr. Jarno to stay in America. So have about 70 other members of Congress.

Jarno is no threat to America. Encourage your elected officials in Washington to join the effort to save this young man from a cruel fate.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, 2005 edition: Clark County (Nevada) Superintendent of Schools Carlos Garcia is living a nightmare. He has the same name as a person on the "watch list" and despite proving over and over when he flies that he is not that person, he remains on the list. What he's learned is there is no way to get off the list.

Garcia said he's worked the bureaucracy, written the letters and reported his problem with minimal results. All he's received so far is a TSA letter he's now supposed to carry with him when he travels by air. He's still barred from obtaining his boarding passes electronically, he can't use the ticket kiosks at the airport and he's stuck waiting in line at the ticket counter while agents flip through their computer screens to make sure he's not the watch list Garcia.

The delays have almost caused him to miss flights and it's doubled the time he's stuck in airports. Garcia said he can understand being pulled aside once or twice, but he's been singled out every time he flies Southwest Airlines, which is a carrier used often by the district for travel to and from Washoe County for state government business.

Garcia asks an obvious question:

Why can't they just look at my frequent flier number or view who's purchasing the ticket?" asked Garcia, who does the bulk of his traveling on district business. "My tickets are being purchased by the CCSD. To my knowledge, the CCSD (Clark County School District) isn't purchasing tickets for terrorists."

Garcia is now asking his Congressman, Minority Leader Harry Reid, to intervene.

If he can't help me, then I think we're living in scary times," Garcia said.

Scary, indeed. [hat tip reader David R.]