"I am in the deep minority in Congress and a fairly new freshman, so I don't have substantive bills that I have been able to pass."
Perhaps she sells her colleagues short on being as batshit crazy as she is, so the minority might not be as extreme as she'd paint it. Deep, actually, at least among the GOP.
The Tarryl Clark campaign continues what both Clark and Reed are doing well - pointing out incumbent deficiencies, that quote and commentary around it being their latest effort. This link. [UPDATE - read the thing, it's short, but the focus is the ineffectiveness of the itinerant incumbent - Bachmann this time, but the term fits Pawlenty too. More time on the road hustling distant hustings, than on the job where each belongs, working diligently in ways that matter.]
And what's this, a fifty-eight year old "freshman"?
I think there might have been a more apt word choice.
I think of freshman as something younger, lower mileage.
Moving on, I think it's great how Bachmann has let the grip go on Ron Paul's coat tails, with the story told well, here.
Last Bachmannalia of the day - here, an interesting item about "the shortest census form since 1790, when we took the first census," as one official characterized it. Let me put things first in context, which will be a bit redundant to those knowing Bachmann:
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told the Washington Times that she and her family will not be fully filling out the 2010 census forms.
Bachmann, a Republican, said her family will only be indicating the number of people in the household, because "the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that."
Bachmann believes the upcoming census to be "very intricate" and "very personal" and expresses concerns about ACORN's involvement in the data collection.
That was, June 18, 2009, this link. Don't misunderstand Bachmann, but in June 26, 2009 reporting she says she was not directly suggesting the Obama administration had plans or was preparing internment camps, this link, only, you never know ...
During an interview this morning on Fox News, Bachmann mostly focused on the danger of her personal information falling into the hands of the dreaded menace ACORN. But at one point, she made a very interesting appeal to history:"Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps," said Bachmann. "I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps."
At this point even Megyn Kelly, who had been gladly dishing out the anti-ACORN talk along with Bachmann, had to take a step back and raise the point that the Japanese internment was a long time ago and we haven't had such abuses since then.
For some context on how this fits into Bachmann's overall worldview, keep in mind that she's previously warned of the threat of "re-education camps" where young people would be indoctrinated into the government's official philosophy.
Well, that onerous over-reaching census thing, what would you expect, obviously you expect Bachmann to change tunes 180 degrees, and meet herself going both ways, by at some point saying the census form appears to not be long enough, the Monday, February 15, 2010 "Tea Party Michele" revision of her vision being:
"The one question missing from the census is 'Are you a legal citizen of the United States?'" Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said. "We have no data on how many people are here illegally in the United States. That would be a good piece of information to find out, yet this census form doesn't do that."
I guess needing that information is important, should internment of "these people" ever become, you know, popular and something Bachmann could step into the parade front for, or in fairness, there are other reasons to know about "aliens."
And on that alien-related note, would you really be surprised if the next Bachmann mouth-milestone would be her saying, "The galaxy is on Orion's belt"?
_____________
credit for the deep minority party pic, here, as the underlying image used here
_______MISC.UPDATE_______
The Bachmann choice of Ron Carey to head her reelection campaign is not universally popular, see point (3) at this link. Heat in the governor's race continues, here, with one candidate in third place dropping out without endorsing Siefert or Emmer, here. That party lives in interesting times. Why is it that having the two party system in Minnesota appears to give us two daytime soap operas on different channels? Down ticket, will it get names mixed up? A big question for DFL Senate District 48, who will be the endorsed candidate for the district after the March 16 district convention?