I've signed my jury statements as well, but am aware of a flaw...

... in this system that allows for spoofing. Anyone can write in any name they please.

Perhaps a future upgrade to the jury system could include a way to grant permission to attach one's name formally, in a way that the software and database can verify.

For example, juror statements would be anonymous by default (because there IS a need for anonymity).

But we would have the option of checking a box or button that says "Permission to sign my name to this statement" or something to that effect.

Excellent, excellent post.

A young man stands at a busy store entrance, brightly greeting passers-by. He is all but ignored.

People young and old, from all walks of life, shake their heads and look away, never breaking stride as they maneuver past him.

Why?

What has he done that so alienates all who happen to draw near?

In his hands, he holds a clipboard. Upon it, several pages of paper, pristine and unmarred but for the neat lines and clean columns of a simple grid.

"Won't you please," he entreats any who might hear, "Won't you please sign a petition to put Newt Gingrich on the Massachusetts presidential ballot?"

The gentle men and women who fail in their efforts to avoid his further attention are kind. They refrain from heaping scorn upon him, nor lecturing him on the folly and indiscretion of his quest.

And yet their judgement seems clear: Ya ain't goin' nowhere in Massachusetts, Newt. Folks here know the truth:

#NewtGingrichIsVile

Newt Gingrich is VILE, one of the most repulsive men ever to walk the halls of American government.

The natural impulse is to recoil from such a man in shock and horror.

An impulse we do well to heed, for it has been honed by aeons of evolutionary adaptation to warn us of a danger looming in our presence.

Much as we gag and retch at the discovery of a putrid scent, lest we come in contact with a poison, so are we rightly repulsed at the sight, the sound, the very idea of such a creature as Newt Gingrich.

He is grotesque in the enormity of his lies, the audacity of his hypocrisy, the sheer abundance of gall that oozes from his maw as he inveighs on subjects large and small, all of them beyond his stunted, if gaudily embroidered, ken.

#NewtGingrichIsVile

Ain't no getting around that simple fact, Newt. Humiliation awaits you, and none deserve it more.