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La Jolla Shadow Photoblogging

Various shadows of things on other things, as we continue our slow progression towards the beach.

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September 24th, 2009 at 05:40pm Posted by Eli

What Do Most People Say?

This is dickish and bizarre on so many levels:

Sen. Bob Bennett wants the Census to collect information on who is in the country illegally in its official 2010 count, but Census Director Robert Groves said that’s not practical a mere six months before the questionnaires are mailed to every household.

“A lot of the forms are already printed,” Groves said Wednesday. “That train has left for the 2010 Census clearly.”

Bennett, a Utah Republican who faces a tough re-election effort, introduced a bill last week that would add an 11th question to the Census forms asking if the person is a citizen or legal resident. He wants to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to apportion seats in the U.S. House.

“It does not make any sense for congressional seats and the Electoral College to be determined by a process that unfairly provides the advantage to those communities with high illegal populations,” Bennett said in announcing his legislation.

In addition to being yet still more anti-immigrant demagogic wankery, why wait until six months before the forms have to be mailed out?  Why didn’t Bennett think of this when he had a Republican Congress and a Republican president?  Did he want to make sure that it would fail so he could rant about the Democrats coddling illegal immigrants?

But even if we set those questions aside, does anyone seriously believe that any undocumented immigrant is actually going to tell the Census Bureau that they’re not a “citizen or legal resident”?  That seems like an even bigger practical question than whether or not there’s enough time to change the forms.

2 comments September 24th, 2009 at 11:51am Posted by Eli

Only 64%?

Apparently that’s how many Republicans are completely batshit insane:

The survey by Public Policy Polling finds that 42 percent of Republicans believe Barack Obama was born outside of the United States while 22 percent said they were unsure.

But of course, the primary focus of the story has to be the much smaller percentage of wacky Democrats who believe that Dubya intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen.  As opposed to merely believing that he was so  spectacularly, criminally unconcerned about the possibility of a catastrophic attack that he couldn’t be bothered to lift one single finger to try to stop it.  Yeah, those Democrats are cuh-razy.

So, it’s going to be Palin/Bachmann on the Republican ticket in 2012, isn’t it.  If not Palin/Beck.

(h/t Julia)

September 24th, 2009 at 09:39am Posted by Eli