"As Frank Rich pointed out in a recent New York Times column, of the 35 members of the Arizona House who voted for the immigration bill, 31 voted for another law that would have barred any presidential candidate from appearing on the Arizona ballot in the next elections if he couldn't provide a birth certificate that satisfied the Arizonans' standards. So, ban Obama. But register guns with the federal government? Forget it. Too much paperwork. Too much invasion of privacy.

It's this kind of self-contradicting conservatism, bordering on lunatic libertarianism..."

Two things: 1) Libertarians are strongly against any form of national ID, and this author's casual classification of libertarians as lunatic is incredibly childish.

2) Although I agree with the author that national ID is a bad idea (TM), his comparison here is quite off the scale: the president of the united states is not only significantly more powerful than one person with a gun (he controls thousands of people with guns, and nuclear weapons). In addition, there are legal requirements for office that can be verified by a birth certificate (age among others, and I won't be debating the value of these legal requirements), whereas the federal government EXPLICITLY has no jurisdiction over gun ownership. And these are contradictory laws passed recently by a transient legislature - this is the Constitution of the United States of America. A document, without which, there is no legality of the United States.