Hidden Dangers, Part 1

While we (correctly) anguish over the so-called stimulus bill and its current and future lack of any stimulative effect, there are other, not so well known steps being taken to reshape our society into something unrecognizable and dangerous. Today we review one of them, involving the U.S. Census.

Some news reports have focused on the fact that The One has transferred responsibility for the census from the Commerce Department to the White House, where it will be run by hyperpartisan Rahm Emanuel. You might well ask, what's the big deal? It's just counting, right?

Wrong.

The decennial (every ten years) Census is the basis for Congressional redistricting and provides the data on which the government bases spending for everything from roads to schools, and it provides economic data on which businesses rely.

If the data is objectively compiled, no problem. Liberals, however, have been trying to fudge the numbers for years by "sampling," using statistics to bump up the counts for minorities, children, and renters. So far, they have not succeeded and were rebuffed by the Supreme Court in 1999.

So how will they succeed now? It's simple -- there is no one to oppose them. The 1999 Supreme Court decision was in a case where the House of Representatives (controlled by the Republicans) sued Clinton's Department of Commerce over Commerce plans to use sampling. Now, the House and Senate are controlled by the Democrats, as is the Executive Branch. So who will sue? Even if the Supreme Court would reject sampling (after all, that pesky Constitution does say in Article 1, §2, cl. 3, that there must be an "actual Enumeration" of the population every ten years), it can't do so unless a case gets there first, which will take years, by which time the damage may well be done, both to the census and to our Constitution.

Last year, seven former Census directors signed a letter supporting a bill to turn the Census Bureau into an independent agency, reasoning: "It is vitally important that the American public have confidence that the census results have been produced by an independent, non-partisan, apolitical, and scientific Census Bureau." Senator Gregg withdrew his name as Commerce Secretary-designate, in large measure because of Obama's shenanigans with the Census Bureau.

Will all this have an impact on The One and his minions? Will they truly "restore science to its rightful place in government," as they have promised?

Don't hold your breath.