Two years ago President Obama set up a very cool system where anyone one can post petitions on the white house's website and if they can get 100,000 people to support the petition online then President will issue an official response. Its a very cool way to bring a little attention to an issue. So far the white house has made 120 official responses to petitions.
One that I just recently supported is a petition to allow Tesla Motors to sell cars directly to consumers across the country. Car dealerships are putting up legal fights to prevent Tesla from selling direct to consumers. The petition just recently topped 100,000 so the white house will respond but the more the merrier so go out and support it as well, it is as easy as liking something on facebook.
The official response to a number of petitions opposing the Westboro Baptist Church (the group that protests funerals) just came out. The response didn't say all that much other than "we don't like them either" and "we can't comment on certain matters". I suppose it is a good example of where a petition can't do much because the white house actually can't do that much.
The petition system is nice because it is a little bit of a gamble for the President. I'm sure the President doesn't want to discuss pardoning Eric Snowden. I wonder if it would ever be used by the Republicans against the President, by flash mobbing the system with something super conservative that sounds great with a quick one liner but is really a much more complicated issue, like "Flat Tax". I kind of wish the Democrats had done something like that to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's "YouCut" website, we could have put in "Cut Oil Company Subsidies".
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