Maybe Michele isn't as crazy as we have been thinking

Michele Bachmann says a lot of crazy things, but her comments on the 2010 census may not be so far from the wall as many are suggesting.

The Constitution of the United States of America does indeed provide for a decennial census. But it only specifies one purpose – for allocation of Representatives from the several states. It does not even include locating locations within states to assist them in apportioning congressional, legislative, and seats for other jurisdictions.

A reasonable corollary would be to assume that taking of names and addresses is necessary to make certain that all are being counted and being counted only once. This would require Ms. Bachmann as well as all the rest of us to give a little more information than just that they exist.

But with the increasing cases of government and other big institutions screwing up on privacy matters, one might be reasonably tempted to withhold unneeded information. And despite all the assurances we receive about how secret the data can be we should not forget that we change our rules when we perceive crisis. 1940 census data did help the government find Americans of Japanese ancestry a lot more easily.

Refusing gratuitous answers to irrelevant and personal questions would not necessarily indicate a nut case. It could just be indicating a libertarian.

[And believe it or not, the terms are not always interconnected.]