I suspect that most Americans are big fans of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They are something of a necessary evil in sorting out the complex set of lobbyists’ rules that make up our tax code. The have been politicized under President Obama and that may continue under the next President. The last thing we need to do is give them more power, but that is what is happening.

Investor’s Business Daily reported yesterday that the massive transportation bill that a Republican Congress passed this month gives the Internal Revenue Service new powers to authorize the State Department to revoke U.S. passports. Doesn’t that make you feel secure?

The article reports:

But beware: Beginning next year, those living in states that haven’t upgraded their state IDs as federally mandated may need passports to fly domestically.

So if the IRS has an issue with you, you may find yourself kept off the jet that was supposed to take you to spend Thanksgiving with your folks.

Without freedom of movement, this simply isn’t a free country. Standing at the Berlin Wall in 1963, President Kennedy said, “Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.”

That has changed. This new rule could well be called “The IRS Wall,” and its express purpose is “to keep our people in” — that is, until they’ve emptied their pockets to the satisfaction of Uncle Sam.

IRS power was already disturbing. Last year, the proprietor of a small, cash-only Mexican restaurant in Iowa, a woman not charged with any crime or suspected of cheating on taxes, saw tens of thousands of dollars seized from her checking account by the IRS without a warrant, just because she made frequent small deposits.

It is time to remind those in Washington that the U.S. Constitution was designed to curtain the power of government–not the freedom of Americans.