Commentary from the liberterrain...

It seems that virtually every newspaper in America is a finger puppet of the Census Bureau, blindly playing the public do-gooder role by patting their little readers on their little heads and telling them to be good little sheep and eagerly spill their guts to the temporarily government-badged snoopers.

Answering the "10 simple questions in 10 minutes" will benefit you and your community, they tell everyone.

"At stake is a share of the $400 billion distributed annually throughout the nation," said the Sacramento Bee.

"Many health, social service, transportation and housing programs receive federal funding that is based directly or indirectly on formulas that rely on census population data," said the Juneau Empire.

"Texas could gain between three and five congressional seats," said the Dallas Morning News on Saturday, as well as "a bigger slice of federal resources and funds."

But few sum it up better than Albuquerque Libertarian Examiner Kent McManigal:

"The excuses used to justify the census are all statist excuses. Like saying they need to know how many children they will be locking up in the indoctrination centers in the coming decade. Like wanting to know how much effort the wealth redistribution schemes will be in the next ten years; where the money will be stolen from and where the vote-buying bribes will be concentrated. Or, so they will know how to gerrymander districts to manipulate the vote for those who still participate in that rigged game."

Yesterday, the Edmond (Oklahoma) Sun even performed the public service of warning the unwary that "con artists may pose as census workers" in an attempt at identity theft.

But the US census is itself a con. The "controlling authority," the US Constitution, authorizes the government to do no more than enumerate the country's population.

Merriam-Webster Online: "Enumerate 1: to ascertain the number of: count."

So how exactly do the "10 simple questions in 10 minutes" about your name, gender, age, race, ethnicity, relationship, and whether you rent or own qualify as "counting?"

If all these good-citizen civic-minded newspapers are so intent on performing a public service to keep us all informed, why won't they tell us the truth about the Constitution and the census?

Back in Dallas, "Local Protestant groups have designated Feb. 14 as 'Loving Your Community' Day" to promote the census.

They could just as well call it "Loving the stolen loot day."