Nice try in rewriting history, but the White House web page says nothing about it being publicly posted on the Internet. It's request specifically mentions e-mails:

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.

Care to comment or correct the record?

Not to argue your main point, but the Nazis actually got the eagle from the Roman legions.

See:

http://www.legionxxiv.org/signum/

About halfway down the page.

It's illegal, plain and simple.

A Nixon-era law, passed in response to the abuses of the that administration, makes it illegal for any government entity to collect the names or identifying information on any U.S. citizen who is engaged in lawful activity.

Exercising your First Amendment right to protest a political policy is certain lawful -- at least for now.

Aside from the legality, it's downright creepy to ask citizens to rat on the friends and neighbors for purely political gain. (This is not the same as asking them to keep their eye out for potential criminal or dangerous activities.)

Please stop repeating the lie that the White House asked only for links to "public websites," as you say.

If you look just a little bit lower, I posted the verbatim quote from the White House asking also for e-mails, which if forwarded carry with them information that can be used to identify the sender.

And as I also posted, this is not only creepy, but illegal.

The problem comes when you quote from a HuffPo report that itself relies on things long since proven false, to wit, the Koran-in-the-toilet thing at Gitmo.

Newsweek was force to admit its report was false, even though it never apologized for the many killed as a result of the rioting that report produced.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/newsweek_koran_toilet_story_wrong/

Wrong. The law explicitly states that a government agency may not collect such information. It says nothing about "following" the info. Nice try, though.

Otherwise, you're right. See, there's this pesky thing called the First Amendment. Glenn has written about it frequently. For some reason, though, he's silent on this clear violation not just of the spirit of free speech by an explicit law that protects it in precisely these circumstances.

But what if I just send an e-mail to a friend with no intention of it's being forwarded. And he forwards it to another friend, who then forwards it again.

And it winds up in the hands of someone neither as computer savvy as you nor with the purest intentions, and he forwards it to flag@whitehouse.gov. My right to privacy has just been violated, as has the law.

The law is explicit: no government agency can collect identifying infomation, period. That's why if you're peacefully protesting at an antiwar rally and a cop asks to see your ID, you can refuse to show him unless he can charge you with violating a specific law.

Christopher Hitchens recently wrote about this. There is no requirement to give your ID to any public official (as distinct from showing, say, a merchant your ID for a credit card purchase) if you aren't breaking the law.

And bitching and moaning about a politician's policies, in an e-mail, on a web site, or in person, is not against the law.

I'm really surprised at people on Salon trying to defend this action.

Sorry, but no cigar. The law explicitly forbids any government agency from collecting information on private citizens who are not breaking the law, yet the White House is explicitly soliciting just this information by asking people to send them e-mails.

It has nothing to do with your rights as a private citizen. It has everything to do with the White House as a government entity.

Too funny.

Some of those ads are generated by your IP address. No need to answer this, of course, but are you on a military or police computer system?

Well, I happen to be British of Pakistani descent, so that sort of makes me "Anglo", but not really.

And I've already done it when a cop wanted to know why I was walking by myself down an American street after dark. I simply asked him what law I was violating, and he went away.

Provided, no doubt, by Elmer Fudd.

Kennedy's position was political expediency and nothing more.

Proof?

http://bit.ly/10ECYv

Obama spent more time flying to and from Denmark and speaking to the IOC than he has spent communicating with the supreme commander that he appointed to fight the war that Obama said was the real priority that must be won. (And he was right in that assertion.)