The article is really kind of amusing, given that it goes to some trouble to preemptively deflate what the Senator probably hoped would be a strong policy speech on nuclear issues. Some highlights:

* Senator Obama wants to greatly reduce our stockpiles… and the NYT helpfully points out that the Bush administration is reporting accelerated efforts to do just that, with stockpiles already slated to be cut in half by 2012.

* Senator Obama’s early opposition to the war is mentioned… and the NYT helpfully points out that he hopes to have this emphasized over the amount of time that he’s been a Senator.

* Senator Obama says that we “should not threaten terrorist training camps with nuclear weapons.” I wasn’t aware that he was in fact making this argument, until the NYT took the time to helpfully point this out to me*.

* Senator Obama wants to stop production of American nuclear weapons and make the existing ones not ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. The NYT took pity on him for that one and didn’t say anything, but I won’t: that last is a damfool idea, Sparky. In case you haven’t quite noticed, the country that we primarily built those stockpiles up for in the first place isn’t exactly a paragon of predictability and hard common sense. I’m not quite ready to tell them that we’ve decided not to get MAD at them if they go squirrelly on us.

* Senator Obama wants to use “diplomacy and pressure” to stop Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs. The NYT helpfully notes that his aides had no answer to the question of what happens if that strategy doesn’t work.

* And, oh, yes, this was the subtle one, and it only works in the online version: Senator Obama’s apparently basing this off of an initiative by several former government officials who wrote some commentary in the WSJ last January. Fine, as far as it goes. Does the NYT link to the article? Nope. Does it list the officials? Yup. Does it link the officials’ names? Only Henry Kissenger’s.

Not that it all really matters. The first sentence was the killer. I’d say “unfair,” except that even when you rewrite it to mean “Obama wants to have the US do these things to help other countries to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism” it’s still, well, incorrect. To use an analogy that either Niven or Pournelle once used: I can’t quit your smoking for you. Even if I smoke. Analogy breaks down right after that - unless I’m smoking out of self defense of your smoking - but you get the point.

Now, I’m under no illusion that this hit piece was done to make me happy. Indeed, my happiness is an unfortunate by-product. I don’t know whether the NYT has officially endorsed Hillary Clinton yet, but the odds of them not doing so are, well, low. I’m not saying that there’s anything official going on, but the narrative’s the narrative, and Obama’s doesn’t have the starring role.

I was going to finish it there, but it occurs to me: an Obama supporter may be reading this, and may be wondering what the Senator can do to counteract this problem. The short answer?

Nothing.

Moe

*I’m sure that’s going to play very well with the people who thought that, say, Tora Bora would have looked much better after a tactical nuclear weapon was set off in the middle of it.

New anti-fraud measures will be implemented to increase the security of licensing, officials said. The DMV will use new document verification technology, photo-comparison tools, and staff specially trained in foreign-source identifications. People need to prove New York residency to obtain a license.

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The Social Security number requirement was implemented in 1995 as part of an effort to punish parents for not paying child support. In 2002, the state began allowing people ineligible for Social Security numbers to apply for licenses. A subsequent administrative policy change required proof of ineligibility from the Social Security Administration, a document only available to legal immigrants, thus making it impossible for illegal immigrants to get licenses.

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“Today’s directive to the Department of Motor Vehicles to no longer require provide Social Security numbers, or proof that they are eligible for Social Security cards, will certainly make it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain valid identification to blend into society,” said Michael Long, state chairman of the Conservative Party.

The State Senate isn’t just talking, either, and it looks as if it may have the votes to force a showdown with the ham-handed Spitzer:

In an effort to stop what they deem an ill-advised order from Governor Spitzer that could jeopardize the safety and security of New Yorkers, the New York State Senate will act on legislation next month to prohibit the state from issuing drivers licenses to illegal aliens. The legislation would require a social security number or proof of authorized presence in the United States to obtain a New York State drivers license.

“The Senate has made its’ opposition to the Governor’s plan very clear,” Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said. “The Senate passed a bill earlier this year that would have prevented illegal aliens from obtaining drivers licenses and we will act on a new bill when we return for a special session next month to stop the Governors plan. We need the Assembly to join us. We need the Speaker to bring the Assembly back into session, pass our bill, and deliver a strong message to the Governor that the people of this state oppose his plan and it must be stopped.”

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The legislation the Senate will take up next month is similar to bills proposed by Senator Frank Padavan (Queens) that would require applicants for a drivers license or non-driver identification card, to submit satisfactory proof to the Department of Motor Vehicles that the applicants presence in the United States is authorized under federal law (S.74); and legislation (S.6250), passed by the Senate in June, sponsored by Senator John Flanagan (R-C, East Northport), that would require the Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to obtain proof from any applicant for a drivers license or nondriver identification card who cannot provide a social security number, that they are ineligible for a social security number. The Assembly did not act on this bill.

More here from a Staten Island Republican, and here for more from Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, who insists he will not follow the new policy:

“I’ve been with the DMV 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things. This is the worst,” Merola said of the governor’s plan. “My stomach is in knots. I just don’t understand how I can issue a driver’s license to a person who can’t prove they’re here legally. If they want to put ‘undocumented’ across the top of it, that would be just fine, but they went just the opposite.

“Osama bin Laden could be standing in my lobby and I’d have to give him a driver’s license.”
He said licenses issued by his office after Monday no longer have a temporary stamp that show license holders are not permanent, legal residents meaning the licenses are good for eight years though the driver may no longer be legally in the U.S. by then.

After Pataki’s 2002 order, Merola said, county clerks collected Social Security numbers from drivers’ license applicants and checked the numbers against Social Security records. They found 120,000 cases of bogus Social Security numbers that were used to apply for driving privileges.

Giuliani, who has been under fire from Mitt Romney for policies tolerant of illegal aliens while Mayor but who has been running on a platform of requiring better identification of those who enter the country legally, ripped the plan:

“I think it would just create an even further level of fraud and confusion in what is already a very confusing picture,” said Mr. Giuliani . . .

“The reality is there is so much traffic in false documents that creates part of this problem,” he said. “It is the reason I am so much in favor of a tamper-proof ID card for people who come in from foreign countries and want to work here.”

Like Mayor Giuliani, I’m sympathetic to the problem of how you deal with a large illegal alien population without exacerbating the problem by having - in this case - scores of uninsured drivers on the roads. But so long as the drivers’ license is used as a proxy identification card for broader purposes (which it will be in practice for some time despite federal efforts to improve on the situation), licenses that do not in any way reflect on their face that they were issued without proof of legal residency will only make the situation worse. Spitzer seems to have forgotten yet again that New York is particularly vulnerable to terrorism:

Certain facts about terrorist operations are beyond dispute, and as the 9/11 Commission noted, one is that terrorists cannot function without I.D. The sixty-three authentic U.S. drivers licenses the 9/11 terrorists held (from Virginia, Florida, Maryland and other states) permitted them to blend in as ordinary U.S. citizens; permitted them to rent cars, open bank accounts, rent hotel rooms, obtain credit cards, etc. They used them when purchasing flying lessons. And on the morning of 9/11, their U.S. licenses were the “valid ID” that got them on board the planes they used as missiles.

Those authentic, U.S. issued drivers licenses were the tools that allowed the terrorists to hide in plain sight among millions of other illegal aliens and to obtain all the goods and services they needed to plan, rehearse, finance and carry out their attacks.

Naturally, Spitzer’s allies on the Left are lining up behind him - the AFL-CIO, the NY Civil Liberties Union, and of course, the NY Times. These are, of course, the same folks who invariably line up to protest requirements that even the most basic forms of identification - such as, yes, the drivers’ license - be presented before you can vote (an issue now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court). All of which suggests the real priority here, which is to find new and different ways to enlarge the Left’s political base outside of the pool of U.S. citizens.

Says the Washington Times:

For more than 30 years, Canada’s low dollar and nationalized health care system have given Canada’s auto manufacturing and assembly plants a competitive edge over their U.S. counterparts, said Dennis DeRosiers, a Toronto auto consultant. Private health insurance added between $10 and $25 an hour to labor costs for the Big Three in the U.S.

“Those days are gone,” Mr. DeRosiers said. “The dirty little secret” is that the Canadian Auto Workers union, in its last three or four contracts, ate up Canada’s health care cost advantage in higher wages and other benefits.

That and the surge in Canada’s dollar to parity with the U.S. greenback add up to “higher costs for active workers in Canada,” he said.

So Canadian employees demanded their share of the gains made by shifting manufacturing from the US to Canada, and when that advantage was gone, it became more expensive to manufacture in Canada than in the US.

Sure, this seems like a pretty narrow case: one expensive, unionized labor force gaining an advantage over the another, but it seems to me that once you subtract out the union arms race from both sides, the same principle is going to apply to non-unionzed labor, yes?

Here you will find a copy of the latest version of HR 3087, the aforementioned House bill. To give you an idea of how severely it got changed, the original title was:

“A bill to require the President, in coordination with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military leaders, to develop and transmit to Congress a comprehensive strategy for the redeployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.”

and the new title is:

“A bill to require the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress reports on the status of planning for the redeployment of the Armed Forces from Iraq and to require the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and appropriate senior officials of the Department of Defense to meet with Congress to brief Congress on the matters contained in the reports.”

- And it pretty much goes on from there. This bill ‘requires’ the administration to come up with a plan about how we’re to leave Iraq, should we decide to - I use quotes because it’s precisely like ‘requiring’ the government to spend money or generate annual reports. Two months later, the administration has to tell Congress the status of that planning. Two weeks later, Congress gets to have the SecDef and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs over, to yell at them. 3 months after that, we get another report on the status of that planning. Two weeks after that, somebody in Defense gets to go get yelled at by Congress. And that’s it.

Yeah, the Republicans in Congress are really shaking in their boots over this one.

On the brighter side (the dark side’s pretty darn bright on its own): once this gets touted as the brave Democratic David against the evil Republican Goliath, this should put the Iraqi war on the back burner for a while. This will please the media, given that they’d rather write stories about the Brave Little Barack that Could*; this will also please Congress, given that they’d like to go back to doing nothing in particular. Heck, it’d please us: knock on wood, spit three times, and turn around widdershins, but things are looking up in Iraq just a bit. A no-lose situation, all around.

Well, at least a no-lose solution for anybody that matters**.

Moe

*But won’t.

**What was the quote again? Ah, yes:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”