Every once in a while, our legislators do something to make us proud. New Hampshire's House has done just that by telling Washington's big government crowd to take its national ID card and stuff it.

The Senate should follow suit.

A national ID card would do nothing to thwart terrorism. The 9/11 hijackers were in this country legally and had legally obtained documents.

But the card could create eight-hour waits at the DMV. And there is a real possibility that many ordinary Granite Staters would find it impossible to produce enough documentation to renew their drivers'licenses.

Section 202(c) of the "Real ID Act" lays out a wide variety of federal demands before New Hampshire can issue a state driver's license (or state-issued photo ID). But the section repeatedly states that these requirements are "at a minimum." There is no limit whatsoever in the act on the mandates that the federal government can place on New Hampshire - and on New Hampshire drivers.

For example, section 202(c) requires that every New Hampshire driver provide proof of a Social Security account number. I got my Social Security card in 1966 and haven't used it since. If this or some future administration decides to require that I produce that card to obtain a driver's license, what will happen to me?

If the government decides to screen drivers against one of its "watch lists"- the lists that have inadvertently contained the names of Ted Kennedy and two congressmen, including a House committee chairman - what will happen to ordinary Americans like you who, for some inexplicable reason, turn up on that list?

Remember that, increasingly, you need that driver's license (or state-issued photo ID) to travel on any form of long-distance public transportation, to open a bank account or cash your paycheck, to purchase a house or check into a hotel, to buy an increasing range of goods and services and perhaps even to exercise your constitutional right to vote or purchase a gun - in effect, to function at any level above that of a homeless person.

Those of us who fought to bring down the communist Evil Empire and who traveled extensively within the Soviet bloc remember the long lines of terrorized Soviet citizens waiting for the government to give them permission to travel. Do we want to reconstruct that repressive system in the United States, particularly for the sake of a regime that will do nothing to make us safer?

The big government crowd understands that New Hampshire, by saying no, can bring down the entire system. The courts are not about to allow the federal government to deny New Hampshire residents the right to travel based on whether our Legislature gives in to more Orwellian demands.

So New Hampshire can and should strike a blow for freedom. And it should let the whole world know that, while the Old Man has fallen off the mountain, the motto "Live Free or Die" still means something to us.

(Michael E. Hammond ran for Congress twice as a Republican during the 1990s. He lives in Dunbarton.)

By MICHAEL E. HAMMOND

For the Monitor