[New York governor Eliot Spitzer's scheme to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens] starts in December but is already under fire from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a pro-immigration politician who said the change could lead to the state's licenses not being acceptable proof of identification for air travel.

Bloomberg said Wednesday that the city's lawyer "does believe that in fact this would make New York's state driver's licenses ineligible to be used to get on an airplane. People would need other form of identification, generally a passport, and that would be a very big problem."

"I'm really skeptical that we should be issuing driver's licenses willy-nilly," he added Thursday, "because it then leads to lots of other problems in terms of voter registration and other things. But it's the governor's call."

[Spitzer replies:] "He is wrong at every level _ dead wrong, factually wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong."

..."There is a known vulnerability in state-issued driver's licenses today and shame on us if we don't fix that vulnerability," [Russ Knocke, a DHS spokesman] said. "Anything that would complicate the enforcement of our immigration laws would be concerning, and anything that would frustrate efforts for more secure identification would be troubling."