Tired Of Star Wars Fans, The White House Is Raising The Bar On Online Petitions

Want an official response from the government? You’ll need to collect at least 100,000 signatures. On the very first day of his first term, January 21, 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, calling on all federal government agencies to begin mapping out how to make valuable information available online and solicit public feedback. Since then, and all the way through the past fall’s campaign, we’ve been hearing nonstop from Obama’s people about how 21st-century democracy requires using technology to enhance the . The 2012 campaign’s ease with social media--like having Obama do an AMA on Reddit, or releasing the victory Twitpic heard around the world--sometimes seemed like the lone evocation of the excitement of the first time around. But now the administration is taking a step back from these promises. Under it...