White House's "We the People" doesn't pass smell test

I am inexplicably still on the White House's email list for press releases. Here is what came today.

The text:

White House Announces We the People

 New Online Engagement Feature Invites Public To Petition The White House

  Today, the White House announced We the People, a new online engagement feature.  On this innovative WhiteHouse.gov platform, individuals will be able to create and sign petitions seeking action from the federal government on a range of issues. If a petition gathers enough signatures, White House staff will review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.   Visitors to WhiteHouse.gov can begin submitting petitions later this month.  To sign up for an alert when it launches and preview the feature, visit http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/WeThePeople. “When I ran for this office, I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens.  That’s what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about – giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them,” said President Obama.

To create and build support for a petition, WhiteHouse.gov visitors will simply need to create an account and gather signatures by reaching out to friends, family and coworkers. If a petition reaches a certain threshold – the initial level will be 5,000 signatures within 30 days – it will be sent to the appropriate policy makers throughout the Administration, reviewed, and an official response will be published to WhiteHouse.gov and emailed to all signers of the petition.

As the Immortal Bard once wrote, "It passeth not the smell test." This might be all well and fine and innocent as a newborn lamb. But this is also from a White House occupied by a man who said that he endorses punishing political enemies and rewarding friends. I don't think I'm wearing a tin hat when it sounds the petition system sounds like an attempt  to gather the names of his political enemies.

Or make that, "sounds like another attempt." After all, we've seen this before from Barack "Richard M." Obama when he asked people to rat out dissidents from the then-proposed Obamacare bill.

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.

To which I observed,

Needless to say, had GW Bush's White House announced such an electronic name-hoovering scheme as Obama is doing, the Dems would have been out in the streets with torches and pitchforks and Congress would already be holding hearing even if the Reps were still in majority there. But from Congressional Dems? Only this. ...

John Hinderaker observes, "A secret and more or less permanent dissident database--in America! That's quite an accomplishment for an administration still in its seventh month. It seems longer, somehow." ...

Camille Paglia writes, "I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him." Then,

The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

Will other voices be raised in protest against this "initiative" now? Because for sure no one is going to petition the White House to keep on doing what's it already doing. Only dissidents will.

OTOH, this also smacks of just a PR stunt. How likely is it that 5,000 people will come together online within 30 days to sign the electronic petition? And when they don't, the White House will crow about how "transparent" it is and how much "we the people" just love its policies, because after all, we could have petitioned them to change!