Some critics are decrying Michele Bachmann's advocacy of a federally subsidized, $690-million four-lane bridge from Stillwater, Minn. -- population 20,000 -- to the unincorporated township of Houlton, Wisconsin -- with, and this is no typo, "a population density of 0.00 people per sq. mile" -- as hypocrisy. I must object. It's not hypocrisy. It's groundbreaking stupidity.
For my money (which it is, as well as yours), the project itself is defensible, literally a mere 1/1,000th of Minnesota's bridge construction/repair needs. Build away. Minnesota's Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken support it, as does Wisconsin's Senator Herb Kohl, and his Republican colleague, Ron Johnson. They, along with Michele Bachmann, are only doing their jobs: gunning for as many federal quail as a sorryass federal budget will release. Hypocrisy? Merely another word for "politics."
Bachmann's timing, however, leaves much to amusement. To be scurrying from Iowa to South Carolina to Iowa to South Carolina -- the four corners of real America -- in a denunciation-tour of the dystopian evils of, say, new or passable bridges, courtesy federal tax dollars, is inexpressibly imbecilic. Even for Michele Bachmann.