The battle over Eliot Spitzer's executive order to give New York State ID cards to applicants without a social security number is escalating across the Op-Ed pages of the state. New York Daily News:

Ruben Diaz, the Democratic state senator and Pentecostal minister from the Bronx, calls it the "worst display of racism" he's seen since his days as a young soldier in South Carolina in 1960.[...] At least three of those who spoke at the Senate hearing are connected with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has been spearheading legislation against legal and illegal immigration. FAIR's founder and longtime leader John Tanton is perhaps the biggest nativist in the U.S. today and an open proponent of population control. In the 1980s and 1990s, Tanton's FAIR received more than $1million in funding from the Pioneer Fund, an organization dedicated to promoting eugenics and "race betterment." The Pioneer Fund's leaders have even advocated sterilization of the "feeble-minded." Tom Tancredo, the Republican congressman from Colorado who is running for President, testified against the Spitzer license policy at an Oct. 3 Republican Assembly hearing in Albany. Tancredo told the Denver Post in July 2005 that immigrants "are coming here to kill you, and you, and me and my grandchildren." He has also said: "There are places right now in East L.A. and southern Texas ... there is absolutely nothing you would say that makes them part of the United States of America." These are the kind of people that Republicans in Albany called in as "experts" to testify about Spitzer's license policy.

The Albany Times-Union:

The governor's hell-bent pursuit of an unneeded rule change that would allow illegal immigrants to get New York state driver's licenses is bad public policy and worse politics, and the intensity of the argument over his unprompted decision it is not diminishing. The horrendous political implications are obvious when nearly three-quarters of the electorate are against it, and emotionally so. No matter how the issue turns out in the short run, Spitzer will rue the day he threw this piece of raw meat into the arena. Probably the savvy lawyers in Spitzer's camp can find a way to ram this rule change through, regardless of opposition legislation from the Senate and growing public hubbub. But this arrogant imposition against the will of the people will continue to fester and have a long life, right to the next election.

Nice. Now that words like racist and arrogant are being thrown around, and that we've established that immigrants are here to kill us or, alternatively, that we're back to Jim Crow - somewhat rich coming from Ruben Diaz - I'm sure we'll see an amicable resolution soon that works in the best interests of the state. Watch those upcoming local elections, folks; there may be a surprise or two in store for all of us.