What took so long? White House website now an official advertising arm of the Obama campaign

For a president whose administration has already been held in contempt of court by a federal judge and whose 2008 campaign openly accepted illegal foreign contributions, transforming the White House website into a voter outreach platform shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Visitors to WhiteHouse.gov are now confronted with an email collection script.

It is entirely possible, and perhaps extremely likely, that collection of these emails crosses the line into an illegal use of government property for partisan purposes. The Clinton administration's Justice Department issued a 1999 memo that outlined prohibited behavior.

...activities in the workplace directed toward the success or failure of a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group, would violate the Hatch Act and also would violate the [DOJ]'s rules. For example, inviting individuals to attend a political event, recruiting campaign volunteers or dispersing campaign literature over the Internet is prohibited...

There is only one reason that the White House is collecting email addresses.

It is to promote, directly or indirectly, the reelection campaign of Barack Obama.

Not that legacy media will scrutinize this behavior -- no Weiner involved -- but a few questions spring to mind:

• Why are these email addresses being collected?
• With whom will they be shared?
• Who initiated the redesign of the White House website?
• What kinds of communications will be sent to these email addresses?

The musky scent of David Axelrod is all over this.



Hat tips: JTT, Granny Jan and Jihad Kitty. Linked by: Protein Wisdom and Publius Forum. Thanks!