BACHMANN FEARS CENSUS-DRIVEN INTERNMENT CAMPS…. Last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), solidifying her well-deserved reputation for madness, insisted she will refuse to cooperate with the 2010 census. This happens to be illegal, but the Minnesota Republican has an elaborate conspiracy theory to bolster her position.
Today, Bachmann appeared on Fox News to defend this, and came up with a new argument: “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.”
Bachmann added, “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.”
When Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who’d been bashing ACORN with Bachmann to this point, noted that members of Congress probably shouldn’t deliberately ignore federal law, Bachmann added, “I’m just not comfortable with the way this census is being handled,” in part because Americans are “compelled” to answer the census.
It’s tempting to note that the census hasn’t started and compulsion is kind of the point, but I don’t imagine Bachmann would understand.
Ali Frick, showing great patience, fact-checks the Fox News interview, but let’s also note, as Eric Kleefeld does, that Bachmann’s concerns about census-driven internment camps is consistent with her insane argument that the Obama administration may try to force Americans into “re-education camps.”
I’m curious, does one have to work hard to be this crazy, or does it come naturally?
