The recent news that the White House has used public funds to maintain a computer database of political supporters comes as no surprise, given this administration’s continued inability to tell the difference between running for an office and holding one. What is surprising is the scope of the information the White House has collected on those supporters.
The database, known by the acronym “WhoDB,” contains not simply the routine facts of a person’s life, such as name and address. It also records such details as religion, “Relationship(s) to the First Family,” political contributions, and — this being the Clinton administration — race and ethnicity.
How does the Clinton Administration determine a person’s ethnic origin? Arthur Cola, for instance, the head of the Laborers’ International Union of America, is described on the computer as an “Italian.” And how did White House staffers come to that conclusion? Based on the vowel at the end of Coia’s name? The olive hue of his skin? His love of pasta? Let the stereotyping begin.
Congressional investigators want to know where the names on the database came from — and particularly whether they have been loaned, illegally, to the Democratic National Committee as a fund-raising tool. Also, did the White House compile the list of 200,000 names itself?. Given the time required to enter a name into a database of this complexity, it would have taken 12 White House employees working full-time with no vacations an entire year to complete the task. Rep. David McIntosh is looking into the matter.
