"There is no equivalent in daily life. Nobody has a constitutional right to see the faces of others in the street"

This, x1000.  Personally I don't like the niqab but that's neither here nor there.  There is simply no compelling case to be made for it to be banned.  This is nothing but the symbolic politics of Muslim bashing, and I wish the people here advancing such transparently weak arguments in support of it would simply own up to the real reason that they like it.