I've poked around online and this appears to be on the level, but if it's bogus I'd love to know.

The State Department has apparently proposed a new "biographical questionnaire" for US passport applicants that demands a berserk level of detail... lifetime employment history, including the address and telephone number of every supervisor you ever had; every address you ever resided at, and your mother's address one year before you were born; detailed of "religious ceremonies" performed at birth; and on and on.

An alleged draft of the questionnaire is here (PDF warning).

I couldn't fill this out. I doubt most members of Congress or federal judges could fill this out.

It sounds like a joke, and the mainstream media either doesn't know about this or has ignored it, but there's credible blog coverage here and a docket of negative public commentary at Regulations.gov here. The two-month public comment period apparently ends today, 25 April.

I can't tell if the idea is to use the questionnaire selectively, on new applicants who raise flags in the system (which I think would be Jim Crow-level unconstitutional), or hit everybody with this. In which case get ready to dig up the home address of the anesthesiologist who attended your birth in order to visit Toronto.

Does anyone know any more about this?