[hugh3]

Is this "petitions" feature on whitehouse.gov brand new? I've heard of a couple of petitions today, and never before.

I see right now that there are only 32 petitions there, and every one of them is either a neutral or leftish cause. The only completely nutty one is the UFO one, and there are no troll ones either (I thought "Stop Animal Homelessness At Its Roots" was a clever troll, but apparently it's talking about abandoned pets rather than wild animals).

Have conservative activists not yet got wind of this? Has 4chan not yet got wind of this? Or is the White House carefully curating what petitions it allows to appear on its site?

[philfreo]

In addition, a petition must get 150 signatures in order to be publicly searchable on WhiteHouse.gov.

[hugh3]

One hundred and fifty names (err, anons) should be easy enough to rustle up on 4chan for a petition to... well, whatever the meme of the week on 4chan is.

I googled "white house petitions free republic" to see whether the freepers were planning anything, but so far they haven't got past the "They'll harvest my IP address" paranoia stage.

I'm sure that conservative activists will get wind of this eventually. If there isn't a serious competition for the most-signed petition between "Legalize pot, man" and "Make Ron Paul President" by this time next week then I'll be suspicious that they're deleting things they don't like.

[m_myers]

If it is indeed new, then my first guess is that the leftward lean is from Reddit.