Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful Democrats in D.C., called yesterday for a national biometric ID card.

This is part of the Democrats' drumbeat: Trying to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants by launching a bigger invasion: a far-reaching assault on Americans' privacy and civil liberties.

At least Schumer, who chairs the Senate's primary immigration subcommittee and, more importantly, is a primary caretaker of Democratic Party campaign cash, acknowledged the civil-liberties aspect of this. But as far as he's concerned, it's already a done deal. Apparently, President Barack Obama is already on board, too.

Leave it to liberals. This isn't the first time that they've sacrificed civil liberties in their attempts to solve problems. During World War II, Democrats, supposedly bent on suppressing Nazi sympathizers, passed the Smith Act (formally the Alien Registration Act). Used mostly against right-wingers at first, it was heavily used after the war to suppress lefties. In 1957, the Supreme Court finally threw out prosecutions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional, but the law remains on the books.

The Japanese internment camps — that's a whole other story, including the fact that even civil libertarians like William O. Douglas OK'd them (in the Korematsu case).

Today's Washington Post story carries the blandest of all headlines: "Senate Democrats Address Immigration." But right in the first paragraph, the story says that the Democrats' plan includes "a requirement that all U.S. workers verify their identity through fingerprints or an eye scan." The story continues:

As respected Internet pioneer and privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein said in his PRIVACY forum alert late last night about Schumer's quote:

Track Weinstein on Twitter, and check out his lively PRIVACY Forum, widely read by top geeks.

Obama's probably not a regular reader of Weinstein. The White House seems to have already embraced the Dark Side. As the Post story says:

It goes without saying — and the Post story doesn't say one word about it — that a national ID, especially a biometric one, would create an unprecedented database that not only will rest in the government's hands but also will eventually wind up in the grasp of marketers and advertisers as a key part of "behavioral marketing." Coupled with the personal data already being compiled by the growing web of social media and other ways of tracking people's "preferences," Americans' lives will increasingly become open books available for inspection. Consumers will increasingly be targeted — and kept track of. That may very well be OK with most people. But is this the kind of face book that you want?