Remember this?
Michele Bachmann: Census Data Was Used to Put Japanese in Internment Camps
Bachmann: 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. I’m not saying 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 and put the Japanese in internment camps.
It's hard to keep up with republican hypocrisy, but it wasn't long ago that she said she was not going to fill out her own census form on Glen Beck's show and other FOX news programs yet suddenly she votes to pass the census legislation.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who last year said she was not going to fill out her census form, intends to vote for a measure this week that encourages Americans to participate in the 2010 census.
According to an aide in Bachmann’s office, the North Star State lawmaker intends to vote for a “census awareness” measure on Wednesday. The resolution, offered by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), implores “individuals across the United States to participate in the 2010 census to ensure an accurate and complete count beginning April 1, 2010, and expressing support for designation of March 2010 as Census Awareness Month,” according to a description of the measure.
Michele, Michele, Michele. OK, we progressives are not happy about how the Democratic Party has been running things since they took over, but do we really want MB and the rest of the kooks in the GOP to be the heads of committees in Congress?
David Neiwert:
Namely, that the Census was an overly intrusive act by Big Brother to pry into Americans' private lives, etc. etc., as she waved a long, detailed survey she claimed she had an advance copy of. She again charged that Census data was used to round up Japanese Americans during World War II.
Beck, of course, ate it up, and urged his audience to join Bachmann in her crusade. Except, of course, that everything Bachmann said was untrustworthy: wildly inaccurate, grossly distorted, and downright mendacious -- not to mention completely nutty.
UPDATE: Think Progress has more:
As part of her Census fearmongering that began last year, Bachmann said she won’t trust the government with the new Census information because the Bureau was involving ACORN as a national partner. She claimed ACORN would be conducting the Census and that the organization would “assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers” counting residents. PolitiFact dubbed these claims as “pants on fire” lies. Moreover, ACORN has said they “will not have any role in collecting Census responses” and the Census Bureau said ACORN and other partner organizations will “have no role in the terms or conditions of employment beyond promotion of the availability of temporary jobs.”