A long time ago, before Daily Kos had scoop, or frontpagers, or widespread renown, Markos needed to take a break from the site for a few days. There was no one but Kos posting on the front page, so he needed a guest host to fill in while he was away.
Markos asked Larry Lessig, an amazing and hugely influential Stanford Law professor and activist. This was my introduction to Larry Lessig, and he was incredible... he was knowledgable, readable, funny, and very, very smart.
Lessig lives in Tom Lantos’ district, and since Lantos’ unfortunate death, has decided to explore running for congress.
Lessig has an incredible record of activism...first in the areas of intellectual property and technology, and more recently in fighting the influence of big money in politics. These are the opening paragraphs of his Wikipedia profile:
Lawrence Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic. He is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. He is founder and CEO of the Creative Commons and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center, launched in February 2005. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
At the iCommons iSummit 07 Lessig announced that he will stop focusing his attention on copyright and related matters, and will instead work on corruption in the political system.
He has recently announced that he is starting a new organization (call it a movement!) called Change Congress, focused on making members of congress accountable to all the people, rather than to the people with lots of money. This video, in the classic simple Lessig style, lays out the basis for the movement he wants to start and announces that he is considering a run. Please watch it, it is very good. (I tried to embed it, but I got a bunch of HTML errors.)
With his recent turn to fighting corruption as his main focus, Lessig would be unique and amazing voice to have in congress. He is an acknowledged legal genius, and giving him the political power of a congressional seat would be, in my opinion, one of the very best things we could do for our country. He would work to remove the influence of big money from politics, and he would be a powerful voice on our side of the the issue of net neutrality.
He has set up a website, Lessig08.org, to determine if it is possible for him to run without taking money from special interests or lobbyists. Please join me in assuring him that we will make it possible!
UPDATED 11 am GMT with video link and new title.