Obama using government for enemies list
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| Fri, 08-07-2009 - 2:23pm |
Nixon used government workers to help collect a list of people opposed to government policy. At that time our Supreme Court said this was unconstitutional.
It appears Constitutional scholar Obama believes doing the same for a liberal cause is somehow justified.
I am always amazed at how intolerant liberals really are. Obama wants names, and emails of people who don't agree with him. He even wants children to report parents. Is this Nazi Germany in the 30's?
Cornyn accuses White House of compiling 'enemies list'
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, accusing the White House of compiling an "enemies list," has asked President Barack Obama to stop an effort to collect "fishy" information Americans see about a health care overhaul.
Cornyn, who leads the Republicans' Senate campaign effort, said Wednesday in a letter to Obama that he's concerned that citizen engagement on the issue could be "chilled." He also expressed alarm that the White House could end up collecting electronic information on its critics.
"I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward e-mails critical of his policies to the White House," Cornyn wrote.
Cornyn was responding to a post on the White House's blog Wednesday in which users are asked to help stop the spread of disinformation about legislation to overhaul health insurance. The post offers an e-mail address, flag@whitehouse.gov, for users to forward anything "on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy."
The White House said the post was merely designed to fight "intentionally misleading" information in the health care debate.
"We want to be sure people have the facts about health insurance reform that will lower costs, protect consumers from insurance regulations that deny them coverage and assure quality and affordable health care for all Americans," said Adam Abrams, a White House spokesman. He said no lists or sources of the information would be compiled.
In his letter, Cornyn asked that the effort cease immediately and that the administration inform Congress what it's doing to ensure that names and electronic information about citizens weighing in on health care are not collected.
Kevin McLaughlin, a spokesman for the senator, said that the office had received no response from the administration.
He said Cornyn had not yet considered whether he would push for legislation to address the matter if necessary.

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Well, I say it's better to know who your enemies are before the war starts.....lol.
I think this is a lot about nothing. Of course Obama isn't going to compile an "enemies list" like Nixon did back in the day. Just another right wing attempt to scare the public into believing everybody's out to to "silence" the conservatives.
I don't buy it for a second.
Here's the actual link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/
<flag@whitehouse.gov.>>
While I agree that collecting e-mail addresses is bad judgment and could be construed as abuse/misuse of power, the link does NOT indicate effort to harvest addresses as much as it indicates a desire to glean information about the spin going on with regard to health care reform. Whoever composed that blog entry should have been much more careful about the phrasing; and is probably getting an earful from higher-ups.
There certainly seems to be deliberate efforts to derail reform with one key tactic being to disseminate disinformation/innuendo/spin The GOP learned a LOT about that from Karl Rove. So the White House is trying to make sure that waters aren't fouled by the addition of garbage "facts".
But there is definitely a difference between doing that and "compiling an enemies list". Cornyn is just exploiting sloppy wording for political points and inserting some hyperbole of his own. Shame on both the original blogger and Cornyn too.
Jabberwocka
I'd never trust anything Cornyn had to say, especially about health care reform, without verification.
Both he and Hutchinson are flat against it, period, from what I've gathered.
It's merely an accusation & pretty imaginative
< ....can
Pity though many of the flat earthers don't want to hear facts they'd rather get their 'ideas' from Fox 'news' or right wing radio.
Gawd.... my mother is one of those that only gets her news from both those sources.
Poor you & you'll never change her.
Glenn Beck I've seen him on youtube. His a bag of hot air.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/
"How do some of these people get so brainwashed?"
I don't know. It's beyond my reasoning.
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