We can trust small-potatoes stuff like health care to the government, but when it comes to something as precious as spamming Americans with Obama propaganda, only an efficient market solution will do.

Chris Hansen, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told FOX News that if the White House used the private firm, it’s the same as if it had sent the e-mails.

The White House insists that Govdelivery aggregates nothing and plays no role in the formation of its e-mail list; it is merely an end-product e-mail distributor.

Govdelivery does extensive work with a bevy of federal, state, and local agencies, including 11 Cabinet-level departments such as Defense, State, and Justice. Among the tasks Govdelivery performs are FBI internal e-mails and external regional crime alerts, and FEMA hurricane or other natural disaster alerts…

The White House notes that Govdelivery also handles mass e-mails for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, both Republicans.

Two questions. (1) Did Govdelivery supply any of the e-mail addresses that ended up getting the Axelspam? The White House denies it but it’s still not clear why people who never signed up for their mailing list ended up receiving it. (2) More importantly, do the other pols and agencies that use Govdelivery use it to push items on their ideological agenda or do they limit it to official government business? There’s a big difference between FEMA spending tax money to issue hurricane warnings and The One spending it to push his policy wish list. And if in fact it turns out that Perry and Daniels are guilty of the same thing, why does that let the most accountable administration evah off the hook?

Update: An interesting e-mail from Guy Benson:

I mentioned this controversy on my show last week & got lots of calls from people who never signed up for WH emails (and never contacted the WH/Obama campaign) for any reason), and who still got spammed by Axelrod/Govdelivery. What they all had in common, though, was that they had each emailed their Democrat representatives (Reps and Sens) within a week of getting the Axelrod email…

Could there have been an unspoken/unofficial effort by the Democrat party asking its elected members to forward all constituent correspondence on health care to a centralized DC location….like, say, the “flag” snitch address? Perhaps that’s how these email lists were compiled.