Michele Bachmann outdid herself yesterday. In one breathless burst of anti-Census senselessness, she managed to make two equal and opposite statements:

Twenty-eight pages. Sean, you know the one question they don’t ask? They ask, “are you an American citizen?” They don’t ask if you’re here on a visa or when it expires. We have no real idea how many illegal aliens are in our country. But wouldn’t you think, here they are asking every personal question about our lives, they could at least ask if we’re an American citizen? They don’t bother to ask for that.

Matt Corley of ThinkProgress also outdid himself. It has long been rumored that it is useful for bloggers to actually read the chunks they quote in their posts. It is also widely believed that reading comprehension is a big plus. We cannot, of course, say with any certainty which precept Corley has trouble with. But this is his commentary on Bachmann’s statement:

On Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, Bachmann continued to attack the Census, repeatedly insisting that people should go to her website to “see the Census form for themselves.” Listing off a few questions from the American Community Survey (a long-form survey sent out to one in 40 households each year) that she considers invasive, Bachmann claimed that it doesn’t ask “are you an American citizen”…
[...]
In fact, the American Community Survey does ask about U.S. citizenship and it has since 1890…

If you read only half of what you quote, or understand only half of what you read (or, not to underestimate, Mr. Corley, both), maybe you too can be a blogger for ThinkProgress?

The icing on the cake was the headline Corley or ThinkProgress put on the post: “Bachmann Lies About Census’ American Community Survey, Claims It Doesn’t Ask About Citizenship »” (not sure what that punctuation mark is doing there at the end).

I will watch with keen interest to see whether Corley tries to fix this post. Regular readers may remember that he has more than once gone back and corrected embarrassing errors without bothering to acknowledge that the post in question has been edited. (That is, of course, thoroughly dishonest, and it’s astounding that ThinkProgress tolerates it.)

*** Update, 7:14 a.m. ***

Turns out that all Corley/ThinkProgress are guilty of is an embarrassing typo in their transcript. “They ask, “are you an American citizen?”” should read “They don’t ask, “are you an American citizen?”” Bachmann said the same thing both times.

*** Update #2, 7:33 p.m. ***

Matt Corley may have turned over a new leaf. At the bottom of his post, there now appears this little confession:

Typo corrected in the transcript.

(How hard was that, dude? Make a habit of it, please.)