Democrats to House Republicans: Twitter this
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 03:00PM Here's a fascinating story, courtesy of Ketchum intern employee Amy Araya, that falls between the cracks of politics and media.
Evidentially, the House of Representatives has a rule against blogging official government work outside of the house.gov domain.
It's a questionable rule to begin with -- (why exactly shouldn't members be allowed to blog on their Facebook page or elsewhere?) -- made doubly complicated by new technologies like twitter, which barely constitute blogging.
Texas Representative John Culberson did just that, using his blackberry to post work-related blurbs on Twitter. It's actually a pretty cool idea -- talk about making democracy a participatory process. Anyone who follows his tweets would know exactly what the Congress was up to in real-time.
Congressional leadership sees it differently, however, and have interpreted the no-blog rule to include micro-blogging like Twitter. You'd think that the Democrats in power would be in favor of empowering the people to witness their government in action, but you'd be wrong. My guess is that at some point, the pressure to lift this ban will become too great, and the House leadership will be forced to leap into the 21st century.
Reader Comments (2)
Interesting story. They'll have to embrace tech some day - won't they?? Bet Obama twitters (or will soon if he doesn't already).
Also slightly concerned about obese penguins if the guy above is any indication.
Why would the Democrats only be in "favor of empowering people to witness their government in action" ? Culberson sits on the Right.