A petition has been set up on the White House's website calling for a new investigation of the events of 9/11 by an independent prosecutor. (The petition can be found at http://wh.gov/b1N . Complete text of the petition is below.) Petitioning the White House directly is a new tool to empower more direct input to the government. While internet-based petitions are certainly not new, it is new for the White House and it has a benefit that no other online petition can claim. If enough signatures are collected (25,000), the website rules state that there will be an official response from the appropriate agency emailed to every signer. That is something no other internet petition can even come close to doing.

On the down side completing the petitioning process is not easy. First, in order to sign a petition, people must complete the account set up process at the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov). Setting up an account requires a name, zip code, and email address. And the email address must be verified (by successfully receiving and responding to an email from the WhiteHouse.gov website) before the account set up is complete. Petition signers are not directly identified on the website, however, each signer's first name, date signing, and city are shown in the signer list.

The second hurtle is that when a petition is first set up it cannot be found by using the petition search routine on WhiteHouse.gov. This remains true until 150 people have signed the petition. The only way a petition can be reached before the 150-signer minimum is to use a URL set up for that specific petition (in this case http://wh.gov/b1N ). Signing the petition requires getting the petition-specific URL from someone in your circle of email contacts or through notices on websites like this one.

The final hurdle is that signing must be done relatively quickly. This petition--established on October 31st--must reach the 25,000 signature minimum required for a formal response from the government by November the 30th, a little more than 3 weeks from today. This isn't impossible. For example, other causes, like a petition to recreate the legal wall between investing and banking (17,000+ signatures), have gathered a substantial number of signatures. And the short time frame means that once a petition gets to the searchable stage it is only competing with a relatively small number of other petitions (132 at this writing).

As frustrating as it can be to attempt to bring a factual approach to understanding what happened on 9/11 over the last 10 years, the small step described here is a real one that you can accomplish today. You have within your personal grasp the potential to bring pressure on the government (however small) and potential visibility to this cause. For all the effort that has been made to bring a rational approach to 9/11, please consider one more small effort and sign the petition today. Then multiply your effectiveness by passing the link on to anyone else in your email circle who might care about knowing the truth about 9/11.

Text of the Petition:

Appoint and fund an independent prosecutor and impanel a public grand jury to investigate the crimes of 9/11.

Bring the questions concerning what happened on 9/11 into the judicial process where an independent prosecutor, the power to subpoena, and the risk of prosecution for lies can be used to publicly seek answers to why the first 3 steel superstructure buildings in history fell symmetrically at near free fall speed into their own footprints in New York on 9/11/2001 killing 3,000 people. In addition, notify all current/former federal employees and contractors that failure to respond truthfully and completely to questioning will--in addition to any criminal penalties--result in loss of employment, cancellation of pension benefits, and/or voiding of any employment contract. Further, prosecution for lying or refusing to testify for any reason will not be defended by the government.