I understand and agree with you on all that.
But how do driver's licenses work over there? If you travel to Scotland and rent a car, do you drag out a UK drivers license or is there an English one or what? Is there an EU drivers license or does each member country still have their own?
I'm too lazy to Google. ;-)
Over here, driver's licenses are the most widely used form of photo ID and are generally regarded as second only to passports for verifying identity. The exception (and it's a big one) are fake licenses used by HS and college kids to get alcohol...
As the WP story pointed out, in Virginia it used to be far too easy to get a driver's license with minimal identification. That's why so many of the 9/11 hijackers got theirs here. Once one had a license, lots of things were available that wouldn't be if they didn't have one. Having uniform state driver's license identification requirements seems to me to be a reasonable thing. I think we can have that without having a national clearinghouse or a giant Oracle somewhere and without it becoming a de-facto internal passport.
I agree that a national ID card is a bad idea. It won't make us safer and will make it too easy for identifying information to be misused.
Cheers,
Scott.
