How is it That an Embassy and a Football Stadium Both Cost One Billion Dollars?

This week, we saw news that the United States government is going to build a new, fancy, whiz-bang embassy in England. No expense is to be spared on this embassy, and it even has a moat. It will cost one billion dollars. Its cost is seen as excessive.

By contrast, the Indianapolis Colts stadium, built right here in the heartland, cost one billion dollars. Hoosiers cheered it as "essential to our downtown."

How does an embassy, a building of unsparing technology, fortified with the best anti-terrorism engineering, a building worthy of representing its country and built to be a structure of enduring utility cost the same as a big barn, with a lawn down the middle, flanked with poured-concrete grandstands and having a roof overhead that is partially on garage-door tracks?

Why Hasn't Mitch Daniels Opted Out of Real ID

I love the ACLU. Sometimes, they irk me, but far more often than not, they're on the right side of civil liberties. Here they are again railing against the big-government boondoggle that is Real ID.

http://www.realnightmare.org/news/105/

This Real ID came out of Bush and has made applying for a driver's license an absolute ordeal.

Far too frequently, the self-advertised party of limited government is engaging in some form of big-government activity that runs afoul of someone's civil rights. More often than not, the ACLU is trying to protect someone from the limited-government folks. Ironic, indeed.

If Mitch wants to claim any sort of Conservative, limited-government, credentials, he ought to get opposition to Real ID in high gear before he makes Hell out of Hoosiers' lives. Of course, the Republicans are the same party that wants ID restrictions prior to voting. Ted ("Todd") Rokita stumped with the fallacious "since you need a driver's license to do x, y, and z, you should need one to vote" argument. Thankfully, that horrible requirement was stricken by the federal courts. If Indiana is to have Real ID, let the trials of such national identification not pollute other areas of a person's life.

Better yet, be a Conservative, Mitch, and strike down Real ID.