Census and Sensibility (Part II)

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Michelle Bachmann’s statements about the Census.  She has publicly stated that she will not provide any information other than the number of people in her household.

Much of this discussion has centered around her pointing out that Census information was used to locate and round up American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.  First I should point out that nobody has really challenged this assertion, and if anyone did, that person would be wrong.  Her statement in that regard is accurate.  Much of the argument appears to be that “we have come a long way since then, and besides, there are severe punishments for misuse of this information.”

Really?  Have we come a long way?  If that is true, why is the race card played so reliably by the left?  If one were only to listen to press conferences by the left in America (not to be confused for “the American left”, doesn’t exist) one would probably conclude that America is the most racist country on Earth.  Maybe challenging her concerns on that grounds isn’t the best road to take.

Are there ample punishments?  This of course assumes that first, the person using this information illegally will be caught.  That would require the transparency that this administration and Democrat leadership have talked so much about, but have definitely not produced.  Second it assumes that the punishments will be applied, and applied to all equally.  Not likely under this cronyism based administration.

Bachmann has also been challenged on her assertion that the Constitution does not provide for questions beyond how many people are in a household.  The arguments against this idea are not very strong.  One of the arguments is that the Supreme Court has ruled that additional questions are Constitutional.  This must be the infallible Supreme Court that I have heard so much about.  Dred Scott anyone??  See, I can play the race card too.

Another argument is that the language of the Constitution supports anything Congress wants to ask.  The words used to reinforce this theory are

“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they by Law direct.” 

Most of the arguments, including those before the Supreme Court have concentrated on the words “in such Manner as they by Law direct”.   The idea is that the Congress can make whatever laws are necessary to accomplish the census.  More care should be taken with this though.  The Constitution directs the Congress to ENUMERATE the people.  This word, “enumerate” means the same thing now as it did then.  To count.  Some definitions include more as a result of the misuse of the word, but the accepted meaning is to count, nothing more. 

The Constitution is, contrary to that genius of a Constitutional scholar Barack Obama’s boneheaded assertions, a permissive document in relation to the Federal government.  This means that the Constitution restricts everything from the Federal except for those specific permissions given in the text.  Nothing should be inferred or assumed.  Article 1 is clear in using the term “enumeration.”  This means that the Congress should only make laws directing the manner of counting, not adding to the information collected.  The only exception the Constitution made was to determine whether a person was a slave or free, and this was compromise language.  It didn’t imply an intent to collect additional racial, ethnic, gender, or other data.

Of course, the most obvious proof that Bachmann is right on this, is that the blogs on the left say she is wrong.  To put that another way:  Stupid is as stupid does.

This entry was posted on 13. March 2010 at 17:34 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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