White House's Call for 'Informants' Draws Conservatives' Ire

From the White House Web site:

"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 e-mails 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 e-mail or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said,

"Well, I would hate to see what they're going to get now at flag@whitehouse.gov. I wonder what kind of e-mails they're going to get now. They're looking for tattletales; they're looking for snitches; they're looking for informants; they want their groupies to tattle on you if you happen to be telling the truth about what's in the health care plan.The White House has, as yet, offered no explanation of what it is they plan to do with the tips on policy opposition they hope to receive from citizen informers. Jake Tapper pointed out on Twitter this morning, the title of that post on the White House is a quote from John Adams' 1770 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials.'"

Over at RedState, Jeff Emanuel wrote,

"The term 'disinformation' is used by the Obama White House as a catchall to describe any opposition to the president's push for single-payer, government-run health care -- meaning the White House wants to be informed of any forwarded e-mails or blog posts or any "casual conversations" that could be taken as opposition to their health care overhaul plan."

And TheNextRight's Jon Henke asks: "What, exactly, does the White House plan to do with this information?"

The complaints came on the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that demonstrations against health care reform during congressional town hall meetings are organized by the insurance industry and conservative groups.

White House officials are anxious to aggressively rebut what they see as disinformation. At the same time, they should be cognizant that the use of governmental resources to do so risks making them look heavy-handed or even Nixon-esque (will this lead to an enemies list?)

One wonders how many of my posts have already been e-mailed to the good folks at whitehouse.gov. Perhaps we can add an app for that at the bottom of my posts? "Click here to inform on Matt Lewis . . ."