Reply #13: Author Kreig makes a depressing note under comments:

[mod mom]

"I hate to undermine the basic tool of citizen action -- especially when the stakes are so high in the breakdown of government oversight and when the tools available to the ordinary citizen are so few. But realistically: What's a card or a letter going to do when wihstleblowing attorney Paul Weeks delivered more than 50 bound copies of his 180-page impeachment evidence to virtually every relevant oversight official in three branches of government in 2003 -- and no one did anything? Details are on page 2 of his affidavit, http://eagleviewdc.com/03br.html, although only after he wrote it did he decide to print enough extra copies to hand-deliver one to every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The incentives -- and money is just one of them -- to give short shrift to an ordinary constituent's card or phone call are enormous, just as they were to ignore the documentation that CBS 60 Minutes provided.

Creative mesaures to obtain critical mass are needed. I'm not smart enough to think of many. Yet a fairly simple one surely would be to shoot a video record (the camera need not be expensive) of an official responding to a well-crafted question at a community forum, and then redistribute the video over the Net to relevant constituent groups. Reporters are supposed to be doing this, of course, but this story is a great illustration of a breakdown in that system as well as government."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kreig/siegelman-deserves-new-tr_b_201455.html?show_comment_id=24422895#comment_24422895