Ideas Online, Yes, but Some Not So Presidential

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On Jan. 21, his first full day in office, President Obama promised to open up the government, ordering officials to use modern technologies like Internet message boards and blogs to give all Americans a bigger voice in public policy. Well, the people have spoken. But many of them are not sticking to the topics at hand. The White House made its first major entree into government by the people last month when it set up an online forum to ask ordinary people for their ideas on how to carry out the president's open-government pledge. It got an earful — on legalizing marijuana, revealing U.F.O. secrets and verifying President Obama's birth certificate to prove he was really born in the United States and thus eligible to be president. While it was not exactly what administration officials had in mind, they noted that democracy can be a bit messy.


Ideas Online, Yes, but Some Not So Presidential