Achtung! You vil report on your neighbors, shvine!!!The White House has has issued marching orders to their minions out in the hinterlands to report any suspicious activity re: the health care reform debate.
From the White House website… http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
This is not the way the White House should behave toward the citizenry. We have, at least for now, free speech rights - particularly on policy issues - and the government should not be keeping a tally of regular citizens as to who is for them and who is against them. That is what elections are for. The tally is taken in the halls of Congress not on main street.
Texas Senator John Cornyn has written a letter to the president politely asking if he could please put an end to it. Here's an excerpt:
“I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy’ or otherwise inimical to the White House’s political interests,” Sen. Cornyn wrote. “You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.”
First it's to be the Global Warming deniers to be publically flogged and driven off to the gulags, next it's the health care dissenters!
CW
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