“Talk about Big Brother,” Kent Lenhard told The Californian. “I read it over twice and thought, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this.’”

Lenhard says he won’t fill out the American Community Survey, a long survey sent to a random sampling of households by the Census Bureau each yeah. The paper speculates that Bachmann’s campaign against the census is Lenhard’s motivation.

In Ohio, advocates for low income and homeless residents are worried that Bachmann’s opposition to the census will have a negative impact on the homeless. If enough people follow Bachmann’s example, they say, Ohio would get less federal funding for housing, since the Census is used to allocate such resources.

“With all the cuts we’ve had in Ohio, this has become more important,” Cathy Johnston, advocacy director for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio told the Dispatch.

Johnston said that a massive Bachmann-style Census boycott could jeopardize funding for crime prevention, winter heating assistance and health care funding.

Despite the ruling, marriage-equality advocates vowed to press on, possibly taking the issue to the voters again in the next few years.

“Today’s ruling is a huge blow to Americans everywhere who care about equality. The court has allowed a bare majority of voters to write same-sex couples out of basic constitutional protections,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “This ruling couldn’t be more out of step with what’s happening across the country. We have no choice but to return this basic question of fairness for the estimated 1 million LGBT Californians back to the voters.”

The Log Cabin Republicans also vowed to continue working with California’s Republican elected officials to ensure marriage equality in that state.

“While we were defeated in this ballot initiative, our cause is right and just,” said Leonard M. Lanzi, president of California Log Cabin Republicans “We will continue to work with our allies in the Republican Party and across the political spectrum in California to educate voters that marriage equality is truly a conservative value, along the lines of strengthening individual freedoms, limiting the role of government in our daily lives and preserving personal responsibility.”

The Mormon Church, which spent millions of out-of-state funds to pass Prop 8, released a statement today, as well:

“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court is welcome. The issue the court decided was whether California citizens validly exercised their right to amend their own constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The court has overwhelmingly affirmed their action.

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognizes the deeply held feelings on both sides, but strongly affirms its belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The bedrock institution of marriage between a man and a woman has profound implications for our society.”

SurveyUSA is conducting a series of polls in 17 states to test the popularity of various Republican and Democratic presidential tickets. It’s a dubious endeavor to the extent that many of the VP hopefuls bruited about have little national name recognition at this point, but the top-line results pitting Barack Obama versus John McCain are interesting, particularly where the perennial swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania are concerned.

Those top-line numbers from the five states surveyed thus far:

• Ohio: Obama +9 over McCain
• Virginia: Obama +7 over McCain
• California: Obama +8 over McCain
• Pennsylvania: Obama +8 over McCain
• New Mexico: Obama tied with McCain

The VP matchup results share one common characteristic, and it comports with what Paul Demko noted last week about the Pennsylvania matchup: McCain/Pawlenty pairings consistently fare worse in the surveys than matchups that place Mike Huckabee, Joe Lieberman, or Mitt Romney on the GOP ticket.

This looks to be purely a matter of name recognition for Pawlenty. But it may be less easy for the McCain camp to ignore the relative boost it gets in all the states polled so far when the party’s best-known evangelical, Mike Huckabee, is on the ticket.

The Los Angeles Times reports today that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has removed his mentor in acting and politics, Clint Eastwood, and his brother-in-law, Bob Shriver, from the state’s parks commission. Eastwood, a Republican who served as mayor in his hometown of Carmel, Calif., and Shriver, son of 1972 Democratic vice presidential candidate Sargeant Shriver, saw the terminations from the Republican governator as payback for their opposition to a proposed six-lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach. A Sierra Club official lauded Eastman’s “reverence for open space and public property,” which you can see for yourself in a public service announcement Eastwood made against the toll road.

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