Lessig For Congress?

luge writes "With the unfortunate passing of Congressman Tom Lantos, parts of Silicon Valley and San Francisco will be holding a special election in June to send a replacement to Congress. Given the area, it would be great to have someone who is both tech- and policy-aware fill the seat — and it looks like that just might happen. Lawrence Lessig has apparently bought 'change-congress.com.' A 'Draft Lessig' group is forming on Facebook, featuring some of Lessig's old co-workers at Harvard and Jimmy Wales, among others. No word from Lessig himself yet, but he's been increasingly vocal about politics of late. If it happens, it would be a huge step forward for the representation of technology in Washington."

Comments

Founder of Creative Commons

[cs02rm0]

and board member at EFF apparently.

I'd never heard of him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

Obama Supporter

[ShedPlant]

FEC.gov shows he donated the maximum allowance to Barack Obama's campaign. Just FYI :) .

Re:Obama Supporter

[Pendersempai]

Not to mention writing a blog post explicitly endorsing Obama and uploading a twenty-minute video to the same effect. But, uh, good sleuthing I guess.

Both

[twmcneil]

My take on his recent switch in area of concentration was that he realized that we can't improve copyright until we take care of corruption.

Re:Real chance?

[eln]

He doesn't need to be elected by the whole state, just his district. That particular district covers a big chunk of Silicon Valley, which may be the one place a candidate like that actually could get elected.

Re:Real chance?

[CSMatt]

So then what happens when the rest of the state, or the nation for that matter, votes against what he votes for? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Congress has a significant amount of bad apples.

Lessig lives in the wrong district?

[molo]

Palo Alto (and Stanford) are in California's 14th District, and Lantos is from the 12th District, representing the area from San Mateo, and Redwood City north to South San Francisco, Daly City, and the southwestern portion of San Francisco. I don't think he's eligible to represent the 12th district without moving. So this would be no small matter for him to undertake.

That said, I would fully support Lessig for congress. Hopefully he can bring some knowledge and sanity to important committees.

-molo

Re:Lessig lives in the wrong district?

[paulproteus]

He actually lives in San Francisco, in the 12th Congressional District, according to a blog post from a few years ago. He does still live in San Francisco, not in Palo Alto or at Stanford.

Re:Intellectuals in politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it was obvious that he was just regurgitating a lot of disconnected analogies that had been fed to him by a staffer or (more likely) a lobbyist. He had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Watch the video, I'm sure YouTube would have it if you searched for "Ted Stevens tubes".

Not Silicon Valley

[statemachine]

And I'm not even being pedantic here. The 12th district is on the northern part of the peninsula.

Congressman Mike Honda is the representative for most of "Silicon Valley" which includes San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino -- the 15th District.

Now, if you want to cover Google and Stanford, then that's the 14th District -- which includes Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City -- and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is very much alive. :)

Silicon Valley is well represented already.