Obama to rout out heretics; too bad they're quintessentially American.

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Obama's Tone-Deaf Health Campaign The president shouldn't worry about the protestors disrupting town hall meetings. He should worry about the Americans who have been sitting at home listening to him. By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ (WSJ editorial board)
...the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well.... the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.
Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president's communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there "always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform." People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president's proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform "that seems fishy"—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word "fishy," with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.) ...commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. ...Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused....(no)second thoughts about ...a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president's health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness....former journalist, now a communications director, failed to notice anything amiss in the details of that communiqué is a bit odd but not altogether surprising.****Having been a biased Lefty as a putative 'journalist", she made the transition to obvious Leftist flack without skipping a beat.****
Crusades are busy endeavors,... Obama administration is in possession of vital answers... those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests ...or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.
... tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was... "not good for the democratic process," and were a breakdown of civil debate.There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, ...its effect on this president, and not all to the good.... his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace....the real Barack Obama—product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and ...they are not prepared to buy. ...despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country's heart and character.... Americans don't take well, for instance, to bullying, ...Neither do they wish to be taken where they don't know they want to go and being told it's good for them....the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.//
Sen. Cornyn Sends Letter To President Obama About "Fishy" Activities Program
Sends letter to President Obama expressing grave concern over new White House program to monitor speech of American citizens’ with opposing political viewsIn a letter to President Obama, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, expressed serious concern about the White House's new program requesting Americans to forward email chains and other communications opposing the President's health care policies. Sen. Cornyn is seeking assurances that the program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America's tradition of free speech and public discourse. Sen. Cornyn's letter also inquires about the collection of names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens that will be reported, which raises the specter of a data collection program.
"I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests," Sen. Cornyn wrote. "You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights." (full text follows)
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