Report All Fishy Rumors!

Can you imagine how "progressives" would have responded if GW Bush set up a flag line to report "misinformation" about the Iraq War or any of his other policies?

'Flag@Whitehouse.Gov' A Snitch Line

by Mark Whittington

Is the White House Compiling an Enemies List?

The Obama administration seems to have committed another political misstep when it set up an email address, 'flag@whitehouse.gov', in order to allow supporters to report on "misinformation" on health care reform.

According to Fox News, "The White House is under fire for a blog post asking supporters to send "fishy" information received through rumors, chain e-mails and casual conversations to a White House e-mail flag@whitehouse.gov.

The news that the Obama administration is gathering information on American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights has caused a firestorm, from Washington, to the talk radio airways, to the Internet.

Rush Limbaugh thundered on his radio talk show, "They're looking for tattletales. They're looking for snitches. They're looking for informants." Limbaugh also suggested that the email address was a "snitch line" being used to compile a White House enemies list.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas has sent a letter to the White House demanding information on the effort to gather data on "fishy" information. Cornyn suggested that the effort was an attempt to intimidate American citizens from expressing opposition to health care reform.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air suggests that there is hypocrisy on the part of liberals who complained about Bush administration efforts to gather information on terrorists and their activities. "Obama, on the other hand, has set up a snitch line not for crimes or terrorism, but for simple political dissent. Where is Pat Leahy now? Shouldn't he be demanding to know why Obama wants to put people under "undue scrutiny" merely for the horrible crime of disagreeing with the President? For that matter, where is the Village Voice and Nat Hentoff?"

The revelation of the 'flag@whitehouse,gov' email operation comes on the heels of a Democratic National Committee ad that described people protesting health care reform at Congressional town meetings as "a mob." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the protestors of carrying swastikas, implying some kind of Nazi influence.

If anything, this kind of reaction to dissent is going to make the dissenters even angrier than they already are. The United States was founded by just the sort of people that President Obama and his Congressional allies disdain, gun toting, tax resisting red necks who didn't flinch when the King's men came marching up the lane to put down a group of patriots that they thought of as a "mob" as well.

The modern rebels are not coming to Congressional town halls with muskets. Their voices and their votes are still potent enough weapons. And now the Obama administration has given them another thing to complain to their now frazzled Congressmen and Senators about. One doubts that they will be very pleased.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2030790/flagwhitehousegov_a_snitch_line.html?cat=9