Erick Erickson: The Left’s Newest Target for Silencing

The other day on his local radio program, RedState.com blogger and CNN Contributor Erick Erickson delivered a 13 minute segment on the census and the lengthier, American Community Survey (ACS).  It was a solid bit of talk-radio monologue, including extensive recitation of an excellent article at The Weekly Standard by Daniel Freedman.  Freedman’s piece details his personal experience with the ACS, the highly personal and intrusive questions and most vividly, the dogged “follow-up” by an ACS bureaucrat who visited his house unannounced, demanded entry and threatened punishment.

Erickson included in his monologue this:  (Full audio is here)

Come on, people. It’s a Constitutional obligation. How can a 21^st century society function without knowing how many people are actually living in the country, legally versus illegally for that matter? What’s the harm with filling out the census? The Constitution — for those of you who say I’m not filling out the c — it’s in the freaking Constitution. You got to fill out your census.

He also spent some time mocking the members of extreme groups who fear giving information like this to the Government will lead to a New World Order.  He even mocked the paranoia of these conspiracy fringe groups by pretending to hear black helicopters.

He then went on to distinguish between the constitutionally mandated census and the extensive and over-reaching ACS.  Over nine minutes into his monologue, Erickson expressed his incredulity over the harassment from the Commerce Department employee who was so dogged in her pursuit of the valuable information about Mr. Freedman’s toilets:

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.

(more…)