APARTHEID, HOOSIER STYLE: A. U.S. district judge has upheld Indiana's right to impose harsh, severe, harsh, excessive burdens on potential voters.

If you're planning to vote in the May 2 primary, you'll have to show a state or federally issued photo ID.

A photo ID, do you hear me? Oh, the horror. Indiana's Democratic Party had claimed that the ID law would keep many people (elderly, minorities and people with disabilities) from casting ballots. For one thing, there's the exorbitant cost of obtaining documents such as birth certificates needed to receive the card! Hey, what about people who were born at home? I'm not kidding — that's actually the question raised by plaintiffs who fought the requirement. Shades of the oppressive Jim Crow regime of the deep south! It's almost funny — except brave civil rights workers actually lost their lives fighting racist voting restrictions. The comparison, besides being insulting, is incredibly stupid. Get ready. Here are the Olympic-level hoops through which oppressed Indianans must now jump. An ID must:

• Display the voter's photo. • Display the voter's name. The name must agree with the voter registration record. • Have an expiration date and either be current or have expired sometime after the date of the last general election on Nov. 2, 2004. • Be issued by the Indiana or U.S. government.

Oh, the thousands who will be disenfranchised, the thousands who can rally in the streets to voice this, their most recent achievement of victim status simply because the name on the ID doesn't match the voter record. Never mind that it takes more than a valid photo ID to open a Target account. Barker wrote in her 126-page opinion: "Despite apocalyptic assertions of wholesale voter disenfranchisement, plaintiffs have produced not a single piece of evidence of any identifiable registered voter who would be prevented from voting" because of the statute. How uncaring, how lacking in compassion. Jesse Jackson was nowhere to be seen, so Howard Dean rushed to played the fool this time. "I applaud the Indiana Democratic Party's decision to appeal this ruling," Dean proclaimed. "As part of our Party's commitment to doing whatever we can to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to participate in our democracy, the DNC will assist the Indiana Democratic Party's legal challenge to this unfair law and continue our fight to make it easier for all Americans to exercise their right to vote." Sure. In the name of "opportunity," Democrats are entitled to commit unrestricted voter fraud. I love it. The vaulted decline of the Roman empire was a measly slouch compared to this kind of cultural debris.