Even The Wall Street Journal →
Congressman Daniel Webster (R-FL 8th) on the American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau:
the definition of the breach of personal privacy, the picture of what’s wrong in Washington D.C., unconstitutional.
That’s a quote provided by a Wall Street Journal editorial which all but implies that the Republican Party is looking a little insane by moving to eliminate funding for the ACS in the House.
Of course Daniel Webster and 209 other Republicans didn’t seem to have much of a problem voting to breach our personal privacy when they voted to extend the Patriot Act. Of course, the ACS asks citizens for innocuous information while Patriot Act gives the government sweeping powers to violate actual civil liberties as a way to investigate crimes justified by raising the specter 9-11 as justification.
Anyways. So we’ve learned that even the Wall Street Journal thinks congressional Republicans have gone off the rails and also that the WSJ does believe in government:
National statistics are in some sense public goods, which is why the government has other data-gathering shops like the Bureaus of Economic Analysis and Labor Statistics.
Amen. Link to editorial via John Sides but you have to use the Google trick to get to the full text.
