Real ID -- Your papers please?

Homeland Security is going forward with its plans to establish nationally vetted driver's licenses. If the next administration lets this go forward, I will refuse to fly or drive ever again. Of course some states are trying to impose voter ID using driver's licenses, so the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist reptilian part of my brain goes hmmm.

This law might have all the best intentions in the world, but it's definitely on the downhill side of a slippery slope. As I've posted before, one of the greatest freedoms in our country is the freedom to travel from sea to shining sea unfettered.

Read all about it.

At least I'll be 57 and probably shouldn't do any driving at that age. And since I live in Washington, DC, what's the use in driving or voting anyway?

As Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said, "Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither."

And something he definitely did say that I use as my email sig: "It is the duty of every citizen to question authority."

Those crazy TSA guys

Five-year-old boys with common names like Matthew Gardner are potential terrorists. Actually I think these TSA agents violated da rules. After the last toddler was on the watch list the powers-that-be issued an edict that children are not included on the no-fly lists.

And man, I bet there are at least 100 Matthew Gardners out there. Must suck to be them at the airport.

In fact I just googled and saw there's a lawyer in Iowa, an actor in the Bay area, a life sciences CEO in the Bay area, a Seattle realtor, a designer in Boston...well, you get the picture.

Houston

I just got back from Houston. What a town. What failed potential. And its panhandlers could give lessons to DC ones. Someone pointed out that a lot of the beggars were probably vestiges of Hurricane Katrina. That's probably tragically true, because I saw some pretty tragic homeless cases.

The one place I did not see homeless folks in downtown Houston, curiously enough, was the Bayou Trail. Picture this: Coming from snowbound DC where it was 27 when I left to a Houston at 80 degrees with about 100 degrees humidity. Of course I had to don my t-shirt and running shorts and check out the trails. That meant the Bayou Trail, which snakes under the complex highway system along a sort of river. It had huge failed potential, symptomatic of the entire downtown, it seemed to me. Visually, it's a great downtown -- so why did it seem so sluggish? The Bayou Trail could emulate San Antonio's Riverwalk. At least decorate it for Christmas!