• U.S. Rep. John Duncan

There is a specter haunting America ... the specter of paperwork!

Yesterday, Tennessee Congressman John Duncan (R, TN-2) voted with a nearly unanimous bloc of House Republicans to rid America of the scourge of too big to fail banks Al-Qaida sleeper cells reality television intrusive and unnecessary census surveys.

According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Duncan & Co. voted to quash the Census Bureau's monthly American Community Survey because ... Big Brother.

No, really. Big Brother wants you to fill out a piece of paper and, should you refuse, lock you in Room 101 and throw away the key forever, or until you submit to the state, a broken shell of your former self.

"It seems to me that is Big Brother type of government," Duncan shamelessly told the Sentinel.

Duncan and a number of federal lawmakers, mostly Republicans, are pushing to eliminate the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau sends out every month to 250,000 households across the country.

The questionnaire asks Americans everything from their ethnicity to how much they earn to whether they rent or own their own homes.

This week, the U.S. House voted 232-190, mostly along party lines, to prohibit the Census Bureau from using federal funds to conduct the survey. All four of the House members from East Tennessee voted in favor of the legislation.

...

Duncan said he can't think of any reason why the government needs to know how Americans get to work, how many bedrooms are in their homes or whether or not they have hot and cold running water — all questions that are posed on the survey.

"It's just ridiculous how detailed these questions get," Duncan said. "It seems to me there's just almost no privacy anymore, and it just keeps getting worse and worse."

Watch as outgoing U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) gets increasingly irritated with our own U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, during a discussion about same-sex marriage, the 2012 presidential election and the Dumpster fire at JP Morgan.

Diplomatic genius and eternal friend of los gringos Rep. Diane Black is concerned.

Hundreds of miles away from her Tennessee district, in a dangerous land most of us see only on the television, Mexicans are invading these United States by (smaller) leaps and (less-than-inspiring) bounds. Like the Domino Theory that provided much of the rationale for "containing" communism in Indochina by bombing it to smithereens, if we don't stop the Mexican invasion elsewhere, why, it could happen here! All of their wonderful culture and delicious cuisine ruining our empire of strip malls and car dealerships and record labels, all because the federal government sought to check and balance the authority of states who want to stem this impending Latino tide with draconian and flagrantly unconstitutional measures.

Not today!

Black has filed an amendment to the 2013 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would "prohibit the use of funds to be used by the Attorney General to originate or join in any lawsuit that seeks to overturn, enjoin, or invalidate Immigration Enforcement Laws in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia."

Not content to merely lick its wounds after the unprecedented implosion of the Stop Online Piracy Act, your United States House of Representatives is busying itself with yet another piece of draconian Internet censorship legislation.

It's called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and this time the rhetorical tack is "cyber security." Alas, the core argument at the heart of SOPA (Them pirates is takin our jebs!) wasn't enough to galvanize the public to support laws that would grant more power to waning media companies that choose to legislative rather than innovate. Now Congress is trying to scare you with the specter of jihadists fomenting violence in your hard drive.

And, wouldn't you know it, it's got the sponsorship of four Tennessee congresscritters, including recording industry darlings Jim Cooper and Marsha Blackburn.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the bill would allow the government and corporations to circumvent existing privacy laws under the auspices of fighting terrorism, but also if intellectual property is threatened.

It’s a little piece of SOPA wrapped up in a bill that’s supposedly designed to facilitate detection of and defense against cybersecurity threats. The language is so vague that an ISP could use it to monitor communications of subscribers for potential infringement of intellectual property. An ISP could even Interpret this bill as allowing them to block accounts believed to be infringing, block access to websites like The Pirate Bay believed to carry infringing content, or take other measures provided they claimed it was motivated by cybersecurity concerns.

The bill's defenders are quick to distance the new bill (CISPA) from the old one (SOPA), like a used car salesman who assures you that the bumper won't fall off this time.

Here's Rep. Marsha Blackburn giving the Republican talking points on the housing crisis. Rather than doing something to help all those underwater homeowners, as the president is proposing, Blackburn just shrugs. She thinks the guvmint should get out of the way and let the all-wise free market fix this mess.

• Let Lamar be Lamar!

Alexander says he wants to curtail energy subsidies by $20 billion annually and pump that money into clean energy R&D.

“First, I would try to swap the money we're spending on permanent subsidies for energy and invest it instead in research. Second, I'd like to focus these funds on the most promising areas of clean energy. I've devised a plan for seven mini-Manhattan Projects for energy independence: solar, batteries, green building, capturing carbon, fusion, making fuels from crops we don't eat and finding better ways to deal with nuclear fuel,” said Alexander, who praised Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s energy innovation “hubs.”

“Our public universities in America are in grave danger of losing their quality and stature at a time when our nation needs them to help create jobs, and this is directly related to federally mandated health care costs soaking up dollars that would otherwise go to the universities. We’re telling the states that you can’t cut Medicaid or make changes, and as a result, the only thing they’re able to cut is aid to community colleges and state universities. I think it’s important for us to know exactly the impact on that.”

Well, we’re here to help. If Alexander were a loyal Pith reader, as he most certainly should be, he would know Obamacare’s exact impact on Tennessee—or at least he’d know it as precisely as anyone.

“Failure is not an option. But, if default occurs, another paycheck for congressmen and senators should not be an option either.”
— U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, announcing his plan to introduce legislation that would halt congressional salaries if the U.S. defaults next week on the national debt.