Maybe Michele Bachmann might want to fill out her census form…

Minnesota has eight members in the House, but the State Demographer estimates Minnesota is within 1,000 people of losing a Congressional seat.

Bachmann’s sprawling district, looping from Stillwater to St. Cloud is the oddest geographically, and many experts agree if one district goes, it will be hers.

Source: WCCO

I noticed a rather odd government website the other day, which led me to wonder exactly how many government websites there were out there.  I don’t know if there is a way to count, but it’s a lot.

And since we know that government is oh-so-frugal when it comes to websites, whether it’s the $75,000 tap water site in Minneapolis, or the $9.5/$18.5/$38 million recovery.gov site, just imagine how much of your money powers this government mess.

We can start with sites that act as directories to other sites.  Of course, you have a choice, because nobody wants just one index:

• USA.gov – Which lists other sites by topic.
• Fedworld.gov – Which… also lists other sites.  But this one has been around since 1992.
• If it’s science info you’re looking for, head over to science.gov.
• But if you just want to search, try USASearch.gov.
• And don’t forget egov.gov, which is mostly about the e-government initiatives.

USA.gov, which used to be firstgov.gov, has won many awards.  They won the Federal 100 by Federal Computer Week, and they also won an excellence.gov award.  And let’s not forget being named Entertainment Weekly’s site of the day for January 1, 2009.  (The reason: The federal domain of New Year’s Resolutions, obviously.)

Of course, some of these sites are so big, you find yourself yearning for smaller, boutique sites.

Want to know about the flu?  Flu.gov.  Hydrogen?  Hydrogen.gov Sadly, there is no helium.gov.

But there is a GlobalChange.gov, which is different than change.gov, the online home of the non-existent Office of the President-Elect.

Also, govgab.gov, a blog!!!!  How hip!

The one good thing about all these websites is that you find out about all sorts of federal bureaucracies that you never knew existed.  For instance:

• The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ahcp.gov)
• The African Development Foundation (adf.gov)
• The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (ahrq.gov)
• The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (ttb.gov) – Part of the Treasury, totally separate from the ATF.
• The American Battle Monuments Commission (abmc.gov)
• The Architect of the Capitol (aoc.gov) – Currently being revamped!
• The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (access-board.gov)
• The Arctic Research Commission (arctic.gov)
• The Armed Forces Retirement Home (afrh.gov)

Whew.  And that’s just the A’s.

Two stories caught my attention today, and since the majority of this blog’s readers are in MN and AZ, I thought I’d put them together:

From MN:

You’d never know it without going online to the new and improved federal government stimulus tracking website, but the economy and jobs picture is really picking up in Minnesota’s 57th congressional district. There in plain sight, it states that 35 jobs have been saved or created as a result of $404,340 in stimulus spending, according to the figures found by the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota on the federal government’s stimulus tracking website on the summary page for MInnesota at Recovery.gov.

Over in Minnesota ’s 27th congressional district, however, it appears to be a bleaker picture for those hoping for a turnaround. The federal government’s statistics indicate only 2.5 jobs have been created or saved despite the listed expenditure of $3,159,657 of taxpayer dollars.

Then there’s the 13th congressional district which outperformed them all. Hard to believe, but the hard working folks in the 13th congressional district generated five jobs from just $42,109 in stimulus spending.

And AZ:

This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration’s $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420.

That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job.

So the people of that 15th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.

So congratulations to the administration on … wait … hold on … this just in…

None of those congressional districts exist.  Sorry.  Each state has eight districts, so the MN 13, 27, and 57 aren’t real.  Nor is the AZ 15th.

Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever.  So transparent, you can almost see right through them.

Remember, these are the people who want to take over your health care.

BTW, the fake jobs/fake districts aren’t limited to AZ and MN.  For instance, there’s CA, KS, NM, NH, and on and on…

Swine Flu, that is.

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients.

The official position is that this is a “pre-emptive move designed to make decisions easier when they need to be made.”

If you really want a scare, try reading some time about the vast powers the government gets during certain crises.  (Suspending Habeas Corpus, etc.)

But I’m not in the tinfoil hat mood today.  So I’ll take the government at its word that this is a normal administrative process, and that there’s nothing to fear.

I did, however, want to pose a question that The Wife^® and I were discussing today:

If the President of the United States were to contract H1N1, would the government disclose that information to the people?  What if it was a member of the first family, but not the President himself?  Would the Bush administration handle this differently than the Obama administration?

Discuss.

A few days ago I wrote about the two longest serving congressmen, which turned into a discussion about term limits.

Today, I noticed this story (via Hot Air, of course) about a federal bribery investigation into Rep. Don Young of Alaska.  He’s #6 on that list of longest serving congressmen, having assumed office in 1973.

Just for fun, let’s look at the top 10:

1. John Dingell (D-MI), 1955 – Seems pretty clean, actually
2. John Conyers (D-MI), 1965 – Admitted abusing his power and staffers, His wife is under federal investigation, and has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery.
3. David Obey (D-WI), 1969 – Once got in a shoving match with Maxine Waters, though it’s hard to hold that against him.
4. Bill Young (R-FL), 1971 – Also seems pretty clean.
5. Charles Rangel (D-NY), 1971 – Tax Cheat.
6. Don Young (R-AK), 1973 – That whole bribery thing.
7. Pete Stark (D-13), 1973 – Lunatic.
8. John Murtha (D-PA), 1974 – Disgrace, Possible Crook.
9. George Miller (D-CA), 1975 – Looks Clean
10. Henry Waxman (D-CA), 1975 – Wrote 434 bad checks for over $100,000 in 1992.  (He’s also the guy behind the extraordinarily destructive pending cap-and-trade bill, but that in and of itself is not corrupt.)

Many links are to Michelle Malkin’s site, since she’s all over the corruption issue.  In fact, she wrote a book about it.  Maybe you should buy it.

Maine senator Olympia Snowe added her support to the current version of the health bill.

At the White House, Obama called the events “a critical milestone” toward remaking the nation’s health care system. He praised Snowe as well as Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the committee, and declared, “We are going to get this done.”

It’s disappointing for opponents of the bill, but not altogether unexpected since she’s spent some time discussing this with the pres already, and she’s only a part-time republican anyway.




UPDATE:
Charlie Gibson interviews, Snowe answers questions with blathering blatherskite, and this, which stood out to me:

Understandably people do have honest philosophical differences…

Yes, I’m glad you recognize that fact, Madam Senator. Both sides want citizens of the US to be healthier, and have different ideas of effective, long term strategy, but that observation does nothing to rationalize unifying toward a bad solution.

Forcing white people to step down from their positions and give them to minorities. Or so says Obama’s Diversity Czar.

The conversation about how we communicate with each other despite being aware of the clear impressions that I know that I make in rooms that I walk into, when people hear my voice, is a challenge. How much do I express the… I think really pretty obvious complaints of black Americans in rooms full of whites.

This… there’s nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem. We’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.

This guy is in our government. Right now.

I knew it! I once saw a toll road in a white hood carrying an Obama = Hitler sign. Racist!

ARLINGTON, Va. – There’s a new turn in the debate over high occupancy toll lanes or HOT lanes.

A lawsuit filed by Arlington County last month claims the lanes benefit wealthy white people and discriminates against minorities. While the only rule to get in the HOV lanes on Interstate 395 is you must have three people in the car, Arlington claims adding HOT lanes would cut out poor and minorities by defacto.

There is literally nothing that is not racist anymore. If you can’t trust toll roads, who can you trust?

via JWF

Apparently to run for congress, you don’t have to live in the district you would be representing.

Charlie Diradour, the local [Democrat] developer who launched his campaign Tuesday to unseat 7th District Rep. Eric Cantor, doesn’t live in the district.

Diradour lives in the 2200 block of Monument Avenue, which is about 10 blocks or so outside of the 7th, which officially picks up just west of Interstate 195. Diradour lives in the 3rd District, which is represented by Democrat Bobby Scott.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t require U.S. lawmakers to live in their districts, it turns out. They must only reside in the states they represent, although most actually do live in their districts for obvious political reasons.

I never knew. I wonder why, when drawing up the rules, they didn’t include that requirement.

This disturbs me. For a lot of reasons.

BOISE, Idaho — When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he’ll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver’s arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.

“I was looking at people’s arms and hands, thinking, ‘I could draw from that,’” Dowell said.

Just what you want, a police office forcefully drawing your blood.

Thank Arizona, I guess… And the Supreme Court…

Starr hopes the new system will cut down on the number of drunken driving trials. Officers can’t hold down a suspect and force them to breath into a tube, she noted, but they can forcefully take blood — a practice that’s been upheld by Idaho’s Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nation’s highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner.

The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence.

I would say so.

I had blood drawn the other day at the doctor’s office for a routine test. They only took a little bit. It ended with me almost passing out and having to lay down for 15 minutes.

Yes, I know- “man up” you’re thinking. Maybe so, but it happened the last time they took blood as well. That time I actually passed out and came to with a frantic nurse shoving some orange juice in my face.

Both times were in a doctor’s office where I was surrounded by trained professionals. I can’t imagine it would go better on the hood of a police car.

Actually, I can think of a million ways this could go wrong, especially with drunk drivers. Say you have some type of medical condition – hemophilia for instance. In a normal setting your doctor would be aware of this. But as the cop has you face first on the ground and you are drunk out of your mind, perhaps that’s not the first thing that comes up.

I’m all for drunk driving enforcement, but this is over the top. I guess I have a new thing to write my state rep about.