REAL ID Act Update, Too Late

Frustration!

Although Knight Ridder reported 45 MINUTES ago that the Senate will be voting TOMORROW on H.R. 1268, the “emergency” supplemental spending measure that has had attached to it H.R. 418 (the REAL ID Act) as a rider, the Senate did not make available the Conference Report with descriptions of updates to the text of H.R. 1268 until late YESTERDAY. Read it by heading here and looking for page H2871. Then search the voluminous text for “Section 102″.

Section 102 of the Real ID act, as written in the House, mandated that the Secretary of Homeland Security waive all U.S. laws, according to his sole discretion, in order to facilitate the constructions of border reinforcements. In the House version of the bill, no administrative or judicial body could review or rescind the Secretary’s waiver of American laws. As you can probably guess, the Republicans (and too many Democrats) ate this up like chocolate-covered sausage and passed the House.

I’d like to tell you what the effective changes to Section 102 by the conference committee are. I’d like to, but the changes that have been made are subtle and complicated, and I need some more time to read the conference report and consult other written materials to figure out the exact implications of the reshaped legislation. Unfortunately, more time to understand this legislation is exactly what you, I and every other non-elite citizen do not have.

Regardless of the content of the bill, isn’t it a shame that our politicians in Congress would feel it necessary to schedule a vote on such a major bill, affecting so many aspects of our nation’s domestic and foreign policy, without allowing the American public an opportunity to review it, comment upon it, and contact their representatives in Washington regarding it?

Section 102 is just a drop in the olympic-sized swimming pool that is this revised-at-the-last-minute bill. What changes to this bill don’t they want you or I to see? What are they hoping will slip by?