GO AHEAD, HIT MY HAND AS HARD AS YOU CAN. Sometimes you just can't improve upon the simple juxtapositions provided by Memeorandum. Alongside a link to Steve Benen's Washington Monthly article about how red-state conservatives are screwing up their Congressional apportionments by denouncing the Census, Memeorandum provides another to the wonderfully apposite ravings of Sister Toldjah:

Why does one side of the Census postcard say it’s “required by law” to fill out but on the other side it says “you’ve been sent a *request* to fill it out”? No wonder the Census return rate is down at this point from the 2000 Census return rate. That and the fact that more and more people in this country are simply fed up with the federal government, a government that laughably suggests via their many Census ads that filling out the Census gives ordinary Americans the power to bring their “fair share” of federal tax dollars to their respective communities. Of course, they don’t mention that the more federal tax dollars poured into the community the more than community is answerable to Washington, DC. This is supposed to be “empowering”? No thanks.

And don’t you love the “non-invasive” Census questions, oh, like asking you for your name, birthdate, and phone number? [Emoticon]

It's official, these people are insane. The Census is in the freaking Constitution. You'd think folks who like to dress up as Revolutionary soldiers and have Tea Parties would approve of it. But apparently even the least objectionable and longest-lived requirements of the Federal Government are too much for wingnuts. Next they'll be talking about the Bill of So-Called "Rights" and the tyrannical Library of Congress.

Maybe they think it was all downhill after the Articles of Confederation, or when civilization itself interrupted the natural Randian state of nature.

I am very fond of my new home, but I'm glad I sent my form in while I was still living in Brooklyn and before I moved to Texas, so I could accommodate these morons in their quest for electoral irrelevance. Nydia Velazquez, bitches!

Jesus -- they're really totally abandoning normal democracy and just betting everything on hopes of a popular insurrection, aren't they?