Obama's "Wired" Administration

This will most certainly be a topic that many within the increasingly pointless far-right sphere will call an "expansion" of government intrusion into people's lives. Perhaps they will even try and spin this into a story of how the Obama administration are directly controlling people.

As a matter of fact, this is a way for more people to become directly involved - for people to help shape the future of their country in a way that the Bush administration has prevented us from doing at every concievable turn:

Accordingly, the president-elect's http://www.change.gov transition Web site features a blog and a suggestion form, signaling the kinds of direct and instantaneous interaction that the Obama administration will encourage, perhaps with an eye toward turning its following into the biggest special-interest group in Washington.

Once Obama is sworn in, those backers may be summoned to push reluctant members of Congress to support legislation, to offer feedback on initiatives and to enlist in administration-supported causes in local communities. Obama would also be positioned to ask his supporters to back his favored candidates with fundraising and turnout support in the 2010 midterm elections.

More here from the Washington Post

Ed Morrissey, over at HotAir, starts in on an almost conspiratorial angle:

However, this site has a .gov top-level domain (change.gov). That is reserved for “qualified government organizations and programs”. The incoming administration technically has no status as a government organization or program until January 20, 2009. The “Office of the President-Elect” doesn’t exist within the government. Furthermore, the use seen at the site is clearly promotional for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and should have been kept at their own campaign domain rather than set up as an official US government site.
And why are they using a .gov site to compile mailing lists?

Why does the government need to collect e-mails and addresses from citizens in order to share their stories with the President-Elect? What purpose does the OPE have for this information? Are they hoping to build a list to sell to political allies, or perhaps just to telemarketers to help pay off the deficit? Since this is hosted as a government site, I think they need to explain what official use they will make of this information.
If we’re going to have a perpetual campaign in the next administration, they could at least have the decency to use their private-sector domain name.

Apparently he, as well as his commentors, are more comfortable when the government does things for him, tells him what to do and what to think, rather than being directly involved.