Super Fast Passport Service

I live in New Mexico, one of the 36 states whose drivers licenses will no longer qualify as identification for domestic air travel as of the New Year. That caused me to worry that I might never return from my holiday trip to Hawaii.

This meant I needed to renew my passport, a process I started the day after Thanksgiving, with a fear that the passport would not arrive before I left on vacation this month. The State Department Web site says it takes two to three weeks to process a passport application even with its expedited service, which I opted for.

Those concerns were alleviated when my wife and I received our passports on Dec. 7 via express mail. That's six business days (almost to the hour) from when we put them in the mail.

I considered this a miracle akin to the Internet, a testament to the Postal Service and the State Department.

Megan Mattson, a spokeswoman at State, told me that even though the department cautions the public that it can take two to three weeks to get a new passport with the expedited delivery option, it's not uncommon for it to take only a week.

Despite the Real ID Act's Jan. 1, 2010, deadline, which will make many drivers licenses in 36 states Unreal ID (unless the Department of Homeland Security extends the deadline), Mattson told me that the volume of passport applications this year is running about 2.7 million behind 2008's volume. State has issued 13.5 million passports in 2009 so far, compared with 16.2 million in 2008.

I'm thrilled to have my new passport but still miffed that I need to use one for domestic travel. That's a policy that was a hallmark of the old Soviet Union, and by today's standard, the Peoples Republic of China.

Such a policy has no place in a democracy.