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ID Law Stirs Passionate Protest in N.H.

Jim Johnson, center, and Lauren Canario protested the federal government's new driver's license rules at the New Hampshire statehouse in April by running a fake checkpoint and demanding people's identification.
Jim Johnson, center, and Lauren Canario protested the federal government's new driver's license rules at the New Hampshire statehouse in April by running a fake checkpoint and demanding people's identification. (By Preston Gannaway -- Concord Monitor Via Associated Press)
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At first, the bill seemed destined to fail, voted down in committee. But then, in early March, Kurk stood up to defend it on the House floor, citing the new federal rules as the beginning of creeping federal intrusions.

"We care more for our liberties than to meekly hand over to the federal government the potential to enumerate, track, identify and eventually control," he said, before quoting Henry and his state's defiant motto, "Live Free or Die."

That brought the house down, and the bill up: State representatives voted 217 to 84 in favor.

Emboldened by that success, groups opposed to Real ID staged a rally in late April in front of the statehouse where, according to a report in the Concord Monitor, some wore "666" on their foreheads -- indicating their belief that a national system of rules for driver's licenses is a step toward the "mark of the beast" prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Lauren Canario dressed up in a Nazi-esque khaki uniform and helped run a fake checkpoint where she demanded people's identification.

Real ID "sounds a lot like the old Nazi movies, and we just wanted to illustrate that," she said in an interview last week.

Someplace else, a movement with this kind of stagecraft might be on the political fringe. Here, it has momentum: A spokeswoman for Gov. John Lynch (D) said this week that he will sign the anti-Real ID bill if it gets to him. And on Wednesday morning, a Senate committee unanimously approved the bill, electrifying its supporters in the audience. "This is a wave of freedom that's going to roll across the country," Joel Winters, a leader in the Real ID opposition movement, said afterward.

First, though, it has to roll across the full New Hampshire Senate. There, Senate President Theodore L. Gatsas (R) said he's worried about what will happen if the rest of the country doesn't follow New Hampshire's lead and his state's residents suddenly need a passport to get on domestic flights.

Arguments against the new federal licensing rules "are great things to say," said Gatsas. "But it's an awful jeopardy to put the state in."


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