Birthers 'overrun' White House online program

[cali]

Micah Sifry reports that an effort at government openness seems to have been swamped by questions about Obama's birth certificate:

Right now, the Open Government Dialogue created as part of the Obama administration's new initiative to engage the public in a participatory discussion of ways to make the federal government more transparent and collaborative looks like it is being overrun by the so-called "birthers"--conspiracy nuts who think the President isn't legitimately a U.S. citizen. Here's a screenshot of recent tweets from @ogovbrainstorm, which automatically shows which ideas have recently gotten 20 positive votes or more:

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http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Birthers_overrun_White_House_online_program.html

[donco6]

1. Those things are a waste of time.

Newspaper blogs are the same way. 4 or 5 people posting endlessly about how illegals are the cause of all problems, or Demo"rats" or taxes or abortion.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Twitter is the wrong medium for such an endeavor. Twitterbombing is waaaay to easy.

[bluestateguy]

3. I could have told you that was going to happen as soon as this started

The thing about trying to open the doors of public dialogue on the issues is that a lot of nutjobs walk through those doors too.

[JuniperLea]

4. These things give unfair advantage...

To the loud and nasty minority.

You see, they are losing their freedoms... they don't have the freedom to control the world anymore, and boy are they pissed.

[spanone]

5. stupid is as stupid does