Change.gov website allows Obamaniacs to "flag" questions they don't like

“Change” you can believe in:

President-elect Barack Obama’s Transition today launched “Open for Questions,” a Digg-style feature allowing citizens to submit questions, and to vote on one another’s questions, bringing favored inquiries to the top of the list.

It was suggested when it launched that the tool would bring uncomfortable questions to the fore, but the results so far are the opposite: Obama’s supporters appear to be using — and abusing — a tool allowing them to “flag” questions as “inappropriate” to remove all questions mentioning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich from the main pages of Obama’s website.

The Blagojevich questions — many of them polite and reasonable — can be found only by searching words in them, like “Blagojevich,” which produces 35 questions missing from the main page of the site.

“Given the current corruption charges involving Blagojevich, will ‘serious’ campaign finance reform that takes money completely out of politics through publicly funded elections be a priority in the first term?” asked Metteyya of Santa Cruz, California.

“This submission was removed because people believe it is inappropriate,” reads the text underneath it.
Also removed as “inappropriate”:

“In light of the recent corruption scandals (Blagojevich, Rangel, Jefferson, Stevens, etc) that have dominated the political scene,is there any ethics legislation being crafted to actually curb corruption and prevent another wave of nixonian cynicism?”, a question from “lupercal,” of Gainesville.

And: “Is Barack Obama aware of any communications in the last six weeks between Rod Blagojevich or anyone representing Rod Blagojevich and any of Obama’s top aides?”, a question from Phil from Pennsylvania.

Declaring a question “inappropriate” is different from merely voting it down; it’s calling foul on a question, not just disapproving of it.

I recall something similar to this happening during the primaries and general election campaign season, where certain Obama fanatics were using Google/Blogspot’s “report this blog” feature to try and silence the pro-Hillary Clinton blogs out there that were critical of The One. However repugnant, at least in that case it wasn’t a government website involved – and certainly was not one made for a candidate who promised a return to “open and transparent government” repeatedly for the last two years.

Ed Morrissey gets to the heart of the matter:

On a campaign web site, a candidate and his staff would understandably rid themselves of anything embarrassing so that the candidate didn’t have to answer for it. Obama stopped being a candidate on November 4th, and became the President-Elect. We know this, because Obama has a government website and a big sign that says â€˜OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT-ELECT’ with his faux seal at every press conference.

In other words, it’s time for accountability. If Obama doesn’t want to answer tough questions, he should stop trolling for them on official government websites. And since we’re all paying for it, nobody should be able to force those questions off of an official government website.

Yep.

Related to all this, Jay at Stop The ACLU has documented evidence via a screencap that at least one news site (KHQA) has scrubbed from its pages an article about a meeting Obama had with Blago to discuss his Senate replacement shortly after the election. As Jay makes clear, this in no way means Obama is guilty of any legal wrongdoing … but it does drive home the point that he has lied multiple times when he stated that he has not talked to Blago about who the replacement could/might be.

As to the reason reason KHQA scrubbed the article? Maybe it’s because one of Obama’s top people contacted them and alerted them that the reporter “misreported” the facts? And after how Team Obama handled news outlets (including Fox) that they had “issues” with during the last two years of campaigning, would it be a surprise to anyone if this site removed the article due to fear of being treated similarly?

Memeorandum has more.

Stanford Matthews says:

December 11, 2008 at 11:00 am

I’m actually quite happy about the way things are beginning to develop. All the concerns expressed by those opposed to Obama’s election that were dismissed by the MSM and others supporting Barack Obama may get the attention they deserve with the Blagojevich arrest and related exposure to come.

Even before the inauguration of ‘the One’ elements of his history and associations are lining up to expose the fraud that was perpetrated during the campaign.

Okay, maybe I’m a little too optimistic but one has to be to remain sane under the circumstances.

Anthony (Los Angeles) says:

December 11, 2008 at 11:31 am

As to the reason reason KHQA scrubbed the article?

While I believe (but I’m not certain) the station was right in its initial report, we have to be open to another possibility: that they were wrong initially and, instead of publicly correcting their mistake and owning up to it, they’re hiding it out of embarrassment. In other words, no requests/orders/threats from Casa Obama — just journalistic incompetence.

Like I said, I think the truth is closer to ST’s speculations (and AJ Strata has a fascinating article making a similar point), but, until hard(er) evidence comes out, we should be very cautious about the conclusions we leap to, lest that leap take us over the edge and into the pit of conspiracy-mongering and Trutherness. The implications for the country in this scandal potentially are too explosive to do otherwise.

Sister Toldjah says:

December 11, 2008 at 11:40 am

Anthony, I’m open to other explanations, but my main point was that it would not surprise me at all if this station caved under pressure. After all, we saw what the Obama campaign did during the primaries and general election campaign season.

December 11, 2008 at 1:01 pm

In the end, I think you’re right not to be surprised, ST. Have a look at this piece from Doug Ross: RED ALERT: Chicago Tribune article referenced Obama-Blago discussions on Senate Seat!

Seems like “Hope and Change” really meant a “change back to the man from Hope.”

Great White Rat says:

December 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Revising history to remove inconvenient or unpleasant facts is nothing new for those with totalitarian instincts. People who fall out of favor in communist countries, for example, became “non-persons” – a more severe form of being thrown under the bus. Many of the president-elect’s followers certainly have the same tendencies, so I’d not be the least bit surprised if someone from the transition team were strong-arming KHQA to remove anything that might tie him to Blagojevich.

Nolanimrod says:

December 12, 2008 at 11:21 pm

Definitely one of the problems of the electronic age. There used to be newspaper “morgues” which could be studied either in the original or on micro-fiche. If everything is electronic then the idea of Winston, in 1984 going back and changing the historical record may become commonplace as long as the people involved have no integrity nor appreciation for truth.