Fishy Snitch E-Mail RIP

Conservatives and defenders of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments--congratulate yourselves! The Obama administration has quietly announced that it is shutting down its "fishy snitch" e-mail address. The basic concept was horrendous, but responses overwhelmingly contained some version of Obama's own fishy health care proposals.

Snitchgate has died a painful death. The Obama administration had attempted to scare off opposition and obtain "misinformation" which was allegedly being circulated by right wing "demagogues" who were "lying" about the wonderful cradle-to-grave government-provided health care bills. The original stated purpose was to save the Republic from false information about Obama's benign plan to take over another major facet of American life and provide a British-style National Health Service. "Not true," said the Obamacrats, "and we need you to report anyone who cannot see the great wisdom of our plan to flag@whitehouse.gov so that we can correct the errors and teach Americans how important it is to pass our legislation."

The Obama people once again completely misread the mood of the American people. From hope you can believe in to hope you can't understand or survive in just a few short months. The reaction to the fishy snitch e-mail scam was huge and immediate. I consider myself politically-aware, but I went to bed knowing nothing about it the day it was announced, and the next morning I had no less than six e-mails from friends and relatives telling me about it. None of those people are particularly politically active, and absolutely none have any direct relationship with the Republican Party or any conservative political organization. Yet all of them were totally outraged by this naked attempt to get people to report each other to the government.

Obama's reaction, of course, was to tell the American people that the response to his concerns for the health of the American people was an orchestrated effort by sinister right-wing organizations and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party to mislead the American people. Unfortunately for his theory, two of the indignant e-mails I received that early morning were from moderate Democrats. Even Democrats can smell a rat. And none of them had yet read any of the responses from the vast right-wing conspiracy. They saw it for what it was, and they reacted.

The Washington Times reported late Monday that the White House "shut down its controversial effort to collect information about what opponents of the president's health care overhaul were saying in person and on the Internet, but said it will continue to track 'misinformation' through its Web site." Yes, but it will do it without the assistance of ordinary Americans who object to being asked to inform on their neighbors.

As if the McCarthy-like request from the White House were not bad enough, it appears that there may have been an even more sinister (and quite likely unlawful) plan contained in the Obama assault on free speech. Within a day of the creation of the fishy snitch e-mail address, people with absolutely no prior connection to the White House via e-mail were receiving e-mails from David Axelrod, one of Obama's major advisors, and a well-known disciple of radical style political subterfuge. The question arose in the minds of moderately sophisticated people of exactly how Axelrod got those e-mail addresses. His e-mail was directed at opponents of the Obamacare Plan and to those who had questioned some of the provisions of the plan which didn't seem to add up right. Thousands of those e-mails went out to Republicans and Independents who had never previously contacted the White House until they sent an e-mail to the fishy snitch e-mail hotline.

It became rather obvious that Obama's folks were not only collecting "misinformation," but were also collecting names and e-mail addresses. And then, a Congressman sent a letter to Obama directly addressing the issue. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) specifically asked for details on how Axelrod obtained those e-mail addresses. Issa had sent a previous letter to the President demanding to know why "the White House was using a separate e-mail account designed to track what it called 'fishy' claims about its proposed overhaul." Putting the two things together, Issa is asking the White House to answer whether or not Axelrod was unlawfully compiling a Nixon-style "enemies list." That answer may be a long time in coming.

An indirect response did come out of the White House Information Office. It explained the shutting-down of the fishy snitch e-mail address by claiming it "was changing its e-mail policies to ensure that advocacy groups could not sign people up to White House e-mail lists without the recipients' permission." Huh? The Obamists are once again deflecting the gaze of the public by claiming to protect Americans from the very thing they were caught doing themselves. They had set up an entirely separate White House e-mail address for the sole purpose of releasing partisan political statements to largely unwilling recipients while collecting the names of political "enemies." Axelrod's e-mail purporting to counter misinformation was in actuality nothing more than the Democrat talking-points on Obamacare.

The Axelrod e-mail fulfilled two goals of the Obamacrats. It allowed him to give Democrat supporters the answers they are expected to give to critics of the Plan, and it further allowed him the opportunity to distort the truth to those who voiced opposition in their e-mails to the fishy snitch e-mail address. As a famous general said, "every war plan is perfect, until the shooting starts." The shooting started almost immediately after the original announcement of the fishy snitch e-mail address. Obama's initial assault failed, and then Axelrod's second assault merely enraged the opposition while failing to rally his own troops.

I just want to warn my fellow conservatives. Obama's plan failed to silence the opposition, and resulted in his retreat and ultimately the elimination of his fishy snitch redoubt. These are only battles in the long war to defeat the government takeover of your entire life. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we cannot relax simply because we won one battle. Obama has merely beat a hasty tactical retreat, and will be back with fresh troops before the end of the August recess. The White House has already admitted that it will continue to "monitor" false information through its broader White House website, and will continue to find methods of determining who is providing the American people with "massive misinformation." We must watch the horizon, and be prepared for the next assault.