re: #201 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

I don’t get it, either. It seems perfectly rational to have a national ID card. Instead, we have a patchwork system involving birth certificates (Certified copies only, please. Photocopies are not accepted), drivers licenses, Social Security numbers and other whatnot. Having a valid passport makes some of these identification hurdles easier, since it can replace the nonsense about getting a certified copy of one’s birth cert, but that doesn’t help the millions of Americans who don’t plan to travel abroad and have no passport.

Everybody gets a SSN now as a child for tax purposes, and the Apocalypse didn’t happen. So, why is requiring a national ID card such an effing big deal?