American Civil Liberties Union

I was at a Target store recently and threw a bottle of wine in my cart to bring as a gift to a party. Later, when I got to the register, the cashier asked to see my ID. That in itself was silly, because it’s safe to say I’m a few years past the point where anyone might mistake me for someone under 21. But whatever; alcohol age-enforcement has gotten bureaucratic beyond all reason.

I held the ID up for her to see. Before I could react, she took my license from my fingers, held it up to a scanner, and BEEP!

Leading yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page is a column by Bill Keller, Show Me Your Papers. It supports the faulty claim that we can solve our nation’s immigration woes if we just create a national ID system, and it specifically lauds a 2010 proposal by Sens. Schumer and Graham to create a biometric social security card that would function as a national ID for every American.

A few links that have caught our eye this past week:

Earlier this month in response to the Pauls’ Internet Manifesto I pointed out that the internet “was created by the government.” Monday Gordon Crovitz wrote a column arguing that this was an “urban legend,” and that the internet “reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government.” Since his column went to print, it has been thoroughly debunked by many experts, including Vint Cerf, Robert Metcalfe, Tim Berners-Lee, and even internet history expert Michael Hilzik, whom Crovitz quotes in his column. Media Matters, summing it up, asks whether the WSJ will issue a correction lest a nation full of Journal readers be left with a falsehood.