Obama's Power Grab

One wonders if Obama knows that he's a one-term president. What if he's decided to be the "sacrifice play" to get the winning run over the plate?

According to Orson Scott Card, that may very well be the case. Obama's recent move to place the census under the control of the White House has been amazingly under-reported, even though if the same things were done under George Bush it would have been decried for the blatent attempt at a coup that it is.

First, he explains how the natural migration of the population from Rust Belt states to Sun Belt states is already turning formerly conservative states into swing states. But that's not enough. Obama wants to clinch the deal:

But no, the Left wants to go after the Census itself. They want to "adjust" the Census by adding "estimated" numbers of uncounted homeless, poor, and illegal immigrants.

This is functionally identical to the practice of the old Democratic Party machine in Illinois, where dead Democratic voters in Chicago turned out in large enough numbers to counterbalance all the Republican votes downstate.

Now it won't matter how many voters there are. If the Census has been jimmied to give Democratic-leaning states more congressional seats and more electoral votes than the actual count of real people would justify, the Democrats will have their "historic realignment" without having to actually persuade anybody new to vote for their candidates.

And Obama has set himself up to rig all future American elections, not through any democratic process, but by fiat. Just like a dictator.

He recommends you lobby your state government to protest this move.

I'd prefer to think that this couldn't be true. But quite frankly I can't see any other good reason why the census should be under the control of the White House. It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Though I do think "fix" is the operative word here.

You Still Need to Ask?

Jennifer Rubin at Pajamas Media asks "Have They No Shame?"
A lesser-noticed development in Washington lately is that Obama has moved jurisdiction over the 2010 Census under the White House instead of the Commerce Department.

I can't think of a good reason for that. Can you? Neither can Rubin:

Had this stunt been attempted during the Bush years one certainly would have heard a hue and cry from good government groups, the media, and academics. We no doubt would have heard a chorus of opposition: “The professional public servants are being shunted aside!” And from those so aghast about attempts to suppress or manipulate voting, we would have expected the shrieks: “This is an attempt to politicize the census and stack the deck for reapportionment!” It is not hard to imagine the reaction if the Bush White House had suggested that a supposedly unbiased statistical undertaking should be directed by, say, Karl Rove.