PASSPORT FOUL-UP SUGGESTS NEW ID CARD DISASTER
ELLEN PERLMAN, GOVERNING - The federal government is struggling under an
onslaught of passport applications due to tougher immigration laws and a
new regulation requiring Americans to have passports to fly out of the
country, including to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Applications for
passports have risen 44 percent between October and March, over the same
period last year, according to a story in The Washington Post. Sixteen
production facilities are working overtime, including 24-hour days at
one center in New Hampshire to help process the 17 million documents.
Still, there's a 10-week wait for a passport at this point.
Does this, perhaps, help the federal government understand the problem
with Real ID? . . . And you thought lines at the DMV branches were bad
before? You think lines at the passport office are bad?
There are about 300 million people in this country and adult drivers
make up a very large portion of that. States are expected to implement a
system to issue Real ID cards by May 2008 - despite the fact that the
proposed regulations for doing so weren't issued until early this month,
even though the legislation was passed in two years ago.
The State Department is struggling over a 5 million application increase
and it's not being asked to do anything new. Just a higher volume of the
familiar. When it comes to Real ID, some of the necessary databases
don't even exist. And the numbers of documents that will have to be
issued far exceeds the number of passports the State Department is
struggling with.
http://governing.typepad.com/13thfloor/2007/03/get_real.html#more
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STUPID SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR TRICK GOES TO SUPREME COURT
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER EDITORIAL - A federal case involving an Alaska
student's free-speech rights touches on issues that hit close to home
here. As the New York Times reported this weekend, Joseph Frederick
unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during an Olympic torch
procession in 2002.
It was off school property, though during school time, and principal
Deborah Morse ordered him to take it down. He refused, she tore it down
and suspended him, so he sued. Morse objected to the sign's apparent
advocacy for marijuana. Frederick said it was simply taken from a
snowboard slogan to be "meaningless and funny" for the TV cameras - a
typical teen prank.
This seems to be much ado about very little, but it has reached the
Supreme Court as a test of previous court rulings over the rights of
school administrators to limit student speech when it conflicts with the
school's "educational mission." Those principles were in play in our
area with a recent flap over an article in a student publication at
Princeton High School critical of the school's football program.
Whether you think a student ought to or should be allowed to advocate
drugs, even in apparent jest and even away from school, is one thing.
But the government here is arguing something far more sweeping - that
administrators have the right to ban virtually any speech that conflicts
with the "educational mission," and that they have the right to define
that mission as they wish.
As with too many First Amendment issues, the Bush administration is
arguing to restrict rights. The so-called "religious right" supports
Frederick, despite his sign's irreverent "Jesus" reference, because they
are concerned, as counsel Jay Alan Sekulow writes, that public schools
"face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political
correctness upon the educational atmosphere."
That's a valid concern. Schools pay lip service to diversity, but that
doesn't always extend to diversity of opinion or ideology. Education is
not homogenization.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070319/EDIT01/
703190313/1090&GID=KFOC/yEZYzzR42sz5HSIXe0anfhYe+hprBP7cpV1/P4%3D
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ELLEN PERLMAN, GOVERNING - The federal government is struggling under an
onslaught of passport applications due to tougher immigration laws and a
new regulation requiring Americans to have passports to fly out of the
country, including to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Applications for
passports have risen 44 percent between October and March, over the same
period last year, according to a story in The Washington Post. Sixteen
production facilities are working overtime, including 24-hour days at
one center in New Hampshire to help process the 17 million documents.
Still, there's a 10-week wait for a passport at this point.
Does this, perhaps, help the federal government understand the problem
with Real ID? . . . And you thought lines at the DMV branches were bad
before? You think lines at the passport office are bad?
There are about 300 million people in this country and adult drivers
make up a very large portion of that. States are expected to implement a
system to issue Real ID cards by May 2008 - despite the fact that the
proposed regulations for doing so weren't issued until early this month,
even though the legislation was passed in two years ago.
The State Department is struggling over a 5 million application increase
and it's not being asked to do anything new. Just a higher volume of the
familiar. When it comes to Real ID, some of the necessary databases
don't even exist. And the numbers of documents that will have to be
issued far exceeds the number of passports the State Department is
struggling with.
http://governing.typepad.com/13thfloor/2007/03/get_real.html#more
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
STUPID SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR TRICK GOES TO SUPREME COURT
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER EDITORIAL - A federal case involving an Alaska
student's free-speech rights touches on issues that hit close to home
here. As the New York Times reported this weekend, Joseph Frederick
unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during an Olympic torch
procession in 2002.
It was off school property, though during school time, and principal
Deborah Morse ordered him to take it down. He refused, she tore it down
and suspended him, so he sued. Morse objected to the sign's apparent
advocacy for marijuana. Frederick said it was simply taken from a
snowboard slogan to be "meaningless and funny" for the TV cameras - a
typical teen prank.
This seems to be much ado about very little, but it has reached the
Supreme Court as a test of previous court rulings over the rights of
school administrators to limit student speech when it conflicts with the
school's "educational mission." Those principles were in play in our
area with a recent flap over an article in a student publication at
Princeton High School critical of the school's football program.
Whether you think a student ought to or should be allowed to advocate
drugs, even in apparent jest and even away from school, is one thing.
But the government here is arguing something far more sweeping - that
administrators have the right to ban virtually any speech that conflicts
with the "educational mission," and that they have the right to define
that mission as they wish.
As with too many First Amendment issues, the Bush administration is
arguing to restrict rights. The so-called "religious right" supports
Frederick, despite his sign's irreverent "Jesus" reference, because they
are concerned, as counsel Jay Alan Sekulow writes, that public schools
"face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political
correctness upon the educational atmosphere."
That's a valid concern. Schools pay lip service to diversity, but that
doesn't always extend to diversity of opinion or ideology. Education is
not homogenization.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070319/EDIT01/
703190313/1090&GID=KFOC/yEZYzzR42sz5HSIXe0anfhYe+hprBP7cpV1/P4%3D
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