Bachmann's census conspiracy theory, Air Tron, and more

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Okinawa) worries that if she thoroughly answers census questions, she will be thrown in a Japanese internment camp by ACORN.

Bachmann originally said she wouldn't fill out the census completely because she was afraid the community organizers at ACORN could use the information for nefarious purposes. When that line of defense didn't work, she went on Fox News and took the next logical step: World War II Japanese internment camps.

"If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps," said Bachmann.

Even Fox had to call her out on this lunacy, noting "we've had a lot of good years since then." We'd also add that the Japanese-Americans subject to internment camps were not Republican congresswomen.

Bachmann started spewing these assumptions in mid-June during an interview with Washington Times. She said ACORN "will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public.... This is very concerning." She went on to say she will tell the government only how many people live in her household because she is concerned that ACORN could misuse her data.

FactCheck calls this statement "flat wrong." ACORN is signed up as a partner with the U.S. Census Bureau, but there are about 30,000 other groups considered partners, and the census officials expect to have more than 100,000 partners by the end of the process. There were 140,000 partners in 2000.

Census bureau public affairs specialist Shelly Lowe said that partners promote the importance of the census, but they don't do any hiring. The census employs 1.2 million workers to do door-to-door work, but employees go through an FBI background check and get fingerprinted before they are hired.

Time to get a new conspiracy, Bachmann. —Kevin Hoffman and Emily Kaiser