The Michele Bachmann angle: Where does right wing terror come from? How about that census, eh?

by: Bill Prendergast

Thu Mar 04, 2010 at 14:28:42 PM CST

...Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) has said she would refuse to answer census questions other than the number of people in her home as a protest against government intrusiveness. "I think there is a point when you say enough is enough," she told Fox News last month.

Ms. Bachmann also claimed - incorrectly - that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the liberal group whose voter registration activities became a flash point in last year's presidential election, would be "in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public" during next year's national survey.

But this year--Bachmann has flip-flopped on this particular favorite of paranoids:
(CONTINUED)

2010 Census: Minnesota to remain at 8 seats?

by: Joe Bodell

Wed Aug 26, 2009 at 08:25:45 AM CDT

As of right now, it looks like Minnesota will avoid losing a seat.

Early analysis indicates that Texas will likely be the biggest winner since the prior count a decade ago, picking up three or four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and Election Data Services Inc., a political-consulting firm. Other states poised to gain at least one seat include Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Florida and Utah.

...

Since the number of seats in the House is capped at 435, the gains in the South and West have to be offset by losses elsewhere.

New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts and the recession-battered industrial states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania each stand to lose a House seat. So does Louisiana, where the population still hasn't rebounded from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which displaced so many residents that census takers face a difficult task in tallying them all.

There's been plenty of discussion over what to do if Minnesota loses a seat next year -- depending on who controls the Governor's office, should Michele Bachmann or John Kline be redistricted out of office, or should the 5th and 4th districts be combined into a super-super-liberal bastion, spreading the suburban areas around the cities out amongst the surrounding districts to produce a 5-2 Republican advantage in the delegation?

Let's be fair: none of these things would be good for Minnesota. More representation -- even insane representation from Michele Bachmann or crass, uncaring representation from John Kline or whatever it is we're actually getting from Erik Paulsen -- means more federal funding for critical state projects and more influence in the House of Representatives.

That we're not on the list of states projected to lose a seat is a good thing.

Bachmann too far off the deep end for Fox News

by: Joe Bodell

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 10:00:17 AM CDT

"Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps," said Bachmann. "I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps."

At this point even Megyn Kelly, who had been gladly dishing out the anti-ACORN talk along with Bachmann, had to take a step back and raise the point that the Japanese internment was a long time ago and we haven't had such abuses since then.

For some context on how this fits into Bachmann's overall worldview, keep in mind that she's previously warned of the threat of "re-education camps" where young people would be indoctrinated into the government's official philosophy.