DNC admitting flag@whitehouse.gov operation collected data?

So claims Erick Erickson at Redstate, and Greg Sargent’s attempt to explain the White House response does appear to confirm it.  Even Greg sounds less than convinced by the latest Obama administration pushback on its Snitch Central e-mail line, now defunct, which is to claim that Senator John Cornyn’s website also collects information from submissions to an information line.  Greg, Erick, and Cornyn point out the very obvious difference:

Now the DNC is striking back by pointing out that similar email collection is done on the Web sites of Senators and members of Congress, including … John Cornyn.

Over on Cornyn’s Senate Web site, for instance, you find that people who want to contact the Senator are asked to submit personal info, such as their names, addresses and emails, which are all required.

Now, some will point out a difference: Cornyn is raising a red flag about people possibly forwarding the White House the emails of others, whereas those writing in to the Senate Web sites volunteer their own info.

But the DNC argues this is a meaningless distinction. Following Cornyn’s logic about the White House, the DNC says, shouldn’t those who write in to Cornyn’s Web site to criticize the Senator ask what his office will do with their personal info? Isn’t it also fair to ask Cornyn to “purge” the email addresses of such critics, too?

Erick scoffs at this explanation, and for good reason:

But, as Cornyn points out, and the DNC admits, with Cornyn’s website it is an individual offering their own information to contact the Senator. With Barack Obama, it is people offering other people’s information.

The difference is even more basic than that.  Cornyn’s website wasn’t designed with the intent of having peoplel snitch on others who dissent politically from the administration or the Republican Party.  The White House designed its Snitch Central for that express purpose.  Also, Cornyn is not part of the executive branch, and thus has no control over law-enforcement agencies, which makes his list somewhat less than terrifying.  Barack Obama and his team run all of the federal law-enforcement agencies that could make trouble for anyone winding up on an enemies list, as we saw during the Nixon administration.

Apparently, the DNC can’t tell the difference.  However, they have performed a valuable service in confirming the White House’s use of the traffic from Snitch Central.

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