Online petitions have a reputation for being useless. But I was surprised to see whitehouse.gov has their own online petition site. The really impressive part is their policy that for any petition receiving 5,000 signatures within 30 days (numbers subject to change), "an official response will be issued" (whatever that actually means).
There's a very interesting one right now: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents.
As with any government website, the implementation is a complete piece of garbage that only barely works. But when it comes to something as important as finally killing off Software Patents, I think it's well worth putting up with. There's a lot of other very good petitions up there, too. I signed a number of them.
I am absolutely appalled, however, that the Ban non-therapeutic routine infant circumcision has only a mere fraction of the number of signatures as Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol (1,583 versus 41,339) even though they were started just one day apart. I'm certainly all for the legalization/regulation of weed (even though I have no interest in using it personally), but seriously: What the fuck is wrong with our society that we care that much more about a recreational substance (yea, yea, "with medicinal properties", I know) than such an absolutely colossal and barbaric violation of basic human rights? And against babies, for fuck's sake! (Not to mention the blatant disregard for the Hippocratic Oath.)
And before you knee-jerkers try to mislabel me a neo-nazi: Even though this country has religious freedoms, there are many things that religions are not allowed to do. Religions are not permitted to kill (erm...I mean "sacrifice") anyone. They can't oppress women, or men. They can't break and enter. Etc. But the key in this case is that they have no right to commit blatant human rights violations even as a religion. Which they currently do on a regular basis anyway. They get rid of that and I'd have no more problem than I have with any other religion. And it's not as if this is purely a religion issue anyway: There's plenty of people with no connection to that religion that have willfully butchered their sons, too.
BTW, If you think it's a "hygiene" issue then you're a fucking idiot. Have you ever washed one of your fingers? Seriously, how fucking hard was that? Just ask any non-gimpdick man how hard it is to wash one simple body part.
2 comments for "whitehouse.gov's Official Petition Boards, Software Patents, and Modern Barbarianism"
Wait, wait, so routine infant circumcision is okay if it's "therapeutic"? But seriously, I would sign that one, but I can't actually see the petition; apparently Whitehouse.gov hides the text of failed petitions. But after seeing the lame responses to some of these petitions, it has become clear that the White House essentially just ignores any petition they don't already agree with.
"Non-therapeutic" was indeed a weird way for that petition's creator to word it. It should be a little more clear that it's something like "If the kid's got foreskin cancer then fine, by all means."
I lost interest too after I saw the White House's email responses. Here's how it seems to work:
1. A petition reaches the required number of votes, so whitehouse.gov is required to issue "an official response". (That should have been made it obvious to me. "Thanks for participating" could technically be called "an official response".)
2. If it's a matter they were already doing something about anyway, they send an email summarizing the status of it (which is kinda nice).
3. Otherwise, instead of giving it any consideration, they basically just say "We haven't been doing anything about it and we're not gonna because we say so" (which is not so nice unless you happen to dislike the idea of "we the people").
So yea, it claims to be a way to get the public's issues heard, but really it's just "Get brief status updates, eventually, and only if a lot of other care about the same issue, too." But then again, maybe that's just because they know it's mostly just people who care more about weed than anything that actually matters.