This proposed federal legislation looks ominous to me:

Under the new bill sponsored by Rep. David Dreier, California Republican and the chairman of the House Rules Committee, anyone applying for a job would have to get a new Social Security card with their photograph and biometric information on it. Employers would be required to verify a job applicant's legal status. Employers who violate the law would be fined $50,000 per instance, five times the current penalty, and the bill calls for hiring 10,000 new Homeland Security Department investigators to enforce the law.

Mr. Dreier said he first began working on this issue in the 1990s, but was a minority in his own party in pushing for the checks. Now, after September 11, he said that's changed.

Opponents to Mr. Dreier's bill already are lining up, with the American Civil Liberties Union saying the new Social Security card amounts to a national ID — something that riles some in both the conservative and liberal camps.

"It's a card, it's national, and it's designed to prove your identity. How can it not be a nation ID card? " said Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the ACLU.

In response to Mr. Dreier, who said the new card would specifically say, "This is not a national ID card," Mr. Edgar said, "I think it's an example of how, unfortunately, some Republicans have abandoned their libertarian principles because of their zeal to attack immigrants, and are simply forced to make silly statements in order to pretend that they haven't."

"National identification" means:

I suppose the argument could be made that it isn't mandatory, as no one has to work. Really? How many people neither have to work nor will ever change jobs, or ever have to look for work? And what protection is offered by the statement on the card that "this is not" what it clearly is? Or that it will not become what it certainly seems destined to become? Frankly, I think the reassurances are scarier than the proposal itself. What kind of morons do they think we are?

Don't answer!

Obviously, it's a rhetorical question, considering the long history of government declarations that they aren't doing what they are doing. Unless, of course, you believe that bridge tolls are "temporary," that certain taxes aren't really taxes, or that tax withholding constitutes "voluntary compliance"! I remember Americans were told in 1965 that silver coins would "remain in circulation." (In 1967 they were withdrawn from circulation, of course.)

The bill's author contends that the stated goal is to ensure that only bona fide U.S. citizens can work. Yet there is nothing to prevent this card from being used as identification, any more than there are any laws preventing a driver's license from being used as identification. I could see Dreier's argument having some validity were there specific language prohibiting the use of the new cards for any other purpose than employment verification -- with criminal penalties for anyone demanding one for any other purpose. I doubt they'd include such a provision, because I think it's pretty obvious the goal here is national ID. I'd be willing to bet that banks, businesses (I'll bet the airlines love it), and assorted police organizations will line up in support of the bill too, and not so that they can verify employment status.

I guess I'm old fashioned, but I think that your money should be yours, that you should be free to work for anyone willing to hire you, to hire and fire anyone you want, and that the government has no right to turn employers into law enforcement agents.

I'd enjoy knowing precisely which enumerated power in the Constitution authorizes the government to force employers and employees in a supposedly free country to get and use these cards.

While still on the list of free countries, the United States no longer ranks among the top ten most free countries in the world, and with laws like this, we'll fall further behind. (We've only Sweden, Finland, Canada, and the Netherlands to beat before we lose the "free country" classification.)

Pretty soon, someone's bound to ask basic questions like "Where's the freedom we're fighting for?"

(Doh! It'll be in the burgeoning underground economy, stupid!)

This proposal is not new. The Cato Institute's Stephen Moore analyzed a startlingly similar similar bill back in 1997:

Recently, a congressional subcommittee held hearings on H.R. 231, legislation proposed by Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., to "improve the integrity of the Social Security card." McCollum's bill would mandate a personal photograph on each Social Security card in order to make it as counterfeit-resistant as a passport. In theory, illegal aliens would be unable to use forged credentials when applying for jobs. Last year, McCollum narrowly failed to win passage of his bill in the House.

Supporters of the McCollum bill argue that making the Social Security card fraud-proof is far different from establishing the kind of internal passport system that typifies totalitarian regimes. In fact, there is even a section in McCollum's bill reassuringly titled "NOT A NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARD." But as the old saying goes: if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

The McCollum bill, combined with legislation last year that established a pilot computerized worker registry system -- the 1-800-BIG-BROTHER hotline -- would put in place the entire infrastructure of a de facto national ID card system. McCollum says that his bill would require only a photograph -- no fingerprints, retina scans or other biometric identifiers. But other proponents ask: why not? Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has suggested a Social Security card with "a magnetic strip on which the bearer's unique voice, retina pattern, or fingerprint is digitally encoded." One of the computer registry pilot projects calls for a "machine-readable card" to authenticate the citizenship of the job applicant.

We've certainly come a long way from the original purpose of the Social Security card. When the system was created in 1935, individual workers were assigned numbers so that the Treasury could properly account for the contributions made to the Social Security fund. To assuage the privacy concerns of American citizens, Congress insisted that the card would never be used for identification purposes. Sixty years later, Congress is thinking about breaking that promise.

Do bad ideas become good ideas with age?