“Hey Americans – About That Whole Violation Of Free Speech Thing. We Didn’t Mean It. Love, Barack Obama.”

I shouldn’t be snarky about this. I mean, it’s the Obama administration attentively listening to its constituents’ concerns, and responding appropriately. And for that, I should be grateful and forgiving and I should give credit where it’s due, right?

Who am I kidding. This is backpedaling of the highest order. That whole, “Hey – if you hear anyone saying fishy stuff about our healthcare plans, you should report them to this special white house email address” thing was so clearly an unprecedented infringement on our right to say whatever the heck we want to say about that stupid healthcare bill that it would have been laughable if it hadn’t been sort of terrifying. And now? Now if you write to that address, you get this message:

“A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

flag@whitehouse.gov
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO::
host mailhub-wh2.whitehouse.gov [63.161.169.140]:
550 5.2.1 … The email address you just sent a message to is no longer in service.We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via:http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.”

Now see, no one from the White House has done the right thing, which is to simply APOLOGIZE for setting up that stupid tattletale email account to begin with. They’re just quietly removing the email account without admitting that setting it up was completely stupid in the first place.

I think what really happened is that they got bombarded with emails from conservatives turning themselves in as a mockery to the whole idea of it, which I kind of love.

But whatever. It’s gone now.