A question to Erick Erickson

Far Right commentator Erick Erickson (why he gets hired with CNN while honest journalism grads like me stay unemployed, I'll never understand) made recent comments about the It's-That-Time-of-The-Decade federal Census:

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

Seeing as how the Commerce Dept. is going to hire me later this month to work part-time as a Census Enumerator, I have a personal question and request for Mr. Erickson:

If it turns out I have to be the little (6-foot-1-inch tall, 300 lb) ACS twerp (I think of myself more as a smartass, actually) knocking at your door, can I go ahead and make arrangements with you to have you shoot me in a non-lethal location?  Say, with me standing in Yeehaw Junction FL and you standing in the Colorado Supermax for taking shots at a federal employee?

I know, I sound like a smartass over here, but seriously these Far Right wingnuts are totally going off the cliff here.  They're all getting paranoid and talking smack about a perfectly legal government function that's been done every decade since this nation was formed under the aegis of the Constitution.  They're all working themselves up into a froth all because this year for some godforsaken reason they're convinced that ZOMG OBAMA ZOMBIE SOCIALISTS ARE GONNA USE THE CENSUS TO EAT OUR BRAINS.

I figure part of the reason the wingnuts are acting up is that in their zeal to hate the federal government they're picking on what have been normal nearly every-day functions of the government.  They rant about service at the DMV (those are state-level functions, and they're actually pretty good in most states).  They rant about the Postal Service (again, the USPS does okay but its problems are that they are losing money as letter-writing gets replaced by emailing and faxing).  They rant about the massive waste and fraud in the national defense budget.   They rant about ANYTHING having to do with the federal government because because because.  Because any effective government program makes their "Government is BAD" meme look foolish or worse a pack of lies.

But this year this term of office, the Far Right are - as I mentioned earlier - going completely over the cliffs.  And a lot of that has to do with their paranoid hatred of Obama.  His being in the White House amps everything up to 11.  Considering they honestly don't HAVE anything on Obama the way they did with Clinton (the previous "questionable" Democrat who dared interrupt the Glorious GOP Revolution that began under Reagan), it just somehow makes it worse because they have to fabricate outrage over everything that doesn't deserve it.

I'm serious here.  Where were these paranoid freaks back in the last census ten years ago?  Was Michelle Bachmann ranting against the Census when she was in the Minnesota State Senate in 2000?  We've had roughly 21 different Census takings over 220 years this nation has existed.  How many complaints were there about the 1990 Census?  My dad was working as an Enumerator back then, did he do anything wrong with your statistics, Mr. Erickson?

Now I admit there was a slight problem with the Census in 1980, but that was quietly resolved with a side order of fava beans and a nice Chianti.  After that, of course...

There was a Census back in 1860: I guarantee you it had nothing to do with the following Civil War (which was fought over slaves no wait States' Rights to be total jerkasses no wait the future peanut industry).  There was a Census after the Civil War ended in 1870: did the Southern states complain about how they were counting people (well, maybe in South Carolina...)?  And there was nothing wrong about the Census back then either: hell, the Census in 1870 was epic because a census taker in San Francisco officially labeled Joshua Norton with the career of Emperor on his tally sheet (click link, scroll 2/3 of the way down, under the pg. 81 spreadsheet).  That was totally awesome!  I can't wait to enumerate, I wonder how many Emperors I'll run into when I do.

Oh, and Mr. Erickson?  I'm really not afraid of you, so I *will* knock on your door if I have to.  And I have to, it'll be my job.  And you'll HAVE to answer the very legal requirements of the Census, per the US Code Title 13, Sections 141, 193, and 221.  Come at me with your wife's skirt shotgun and I'll just list it as a dependent.