The summer after I graduated from high school I was excited to finally be free from compulsory family vacays to celebrate the 4^th of July. So to celebrate both America’s and my own newfound independence, I went big, I went all out – I went to a house party.

It was the kind of party I look back fondly on in remembrance of high school days. There was cheap vodka, a backup keg, and plenty of top shelf liquor plucked from the generous hostesses’ parents liquor cabinet. The night started out innocently enough, with keg stands, red and blue shots (white didn’t work out the way we’d planned), and plenty of high schoolers bragging about just how wasted they were.

As a mature, soon-to-be-freshman, I was so over the same un-graduated attendees that had been plaguing house parties for the last 4 years of my life. As I lamented the lack of “real men” with my equally sophisticated best friends, the college guys showed up. Read More »

Congress recently voted on the endorsement of standardized electronically readable driver’s licenses but will this proposal make way for what will amount to a National Identification Card? The idea of a tracking device is terrifying. Though our civil liberties have been systemically eroding since 1913 it seems that America has reached an all new low. The vote was divided among both parties and The US House of Representatives approved a Republican-backed measure that would require all US states to design the licenses by December 2009 complying with federal regulation for antiterrorism. Don’t want a card that allows the government to track you 24/7? Best of luck getting into federal building much less on a plane or across a border.

Technology in identification cards is nothing new. Radio Frequency Identification Chips will in fact be implanted in passports within coming years. Now, your driver’s license seems like the next step in the execution of a terrible plot to monitor Americans day in and day out. The cards issued state to state will in fact be voluntary but a non card carrier will not be allowed entry into an airport or onto a train. It will be in our best and also worst interest in this case to carry a national ID. Read More »