Megyn Kelly goes toe-to-toe with White House deputy secretary Bill Burton about Linda Douglass’ Snitch Central for almost seven minutes, mainly because Burton refuses to answer Kelly’s question about the storage of the e-mails it receives. Her question — does the White House purge the e-mails it receives complaining about dissent on Obamacare — has a straightforward answer: no. In fact, the White House can’t delete them, due to laws governing official communications in the executive branch. Why Burton doesn’t just say that is a mystery (via Greg Hengler at Townhall):

There are numerous problems with Burton’s response, but the biggest is the notion that a White House staffed with political operatives (as all are) somehow need a snitch line to find out what’s being said about ObamaCare. Are Burton and and his colleagues in the press office so incompetent that they can’t follow the news media and the larger blogs? They can do that themselves and present their own rebuttals in real time without Snitch Central in the West Wing.

Either they’re completely incompetent at the most basic New Media task — that of following RSS feeds — or they’re paranoid and want to turn Americans into snitches on political dissent. Even Nixon had the good sense to build his own enemies list.