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Fight over whether congressmen are allowed to blog
Story here. A Congressman is using Twitter and posting videos, and this revolutionary approach to communicating with Americans is causing a stir:
"Culberson's actions have put him in possible violation of House rules that appear to ban blogging or other work-related activities on non-House Web sites.
Current rules "have been interpreted to prohibit (House) members from posting official content outside of the House.gov domain," Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., chairman of the Congressional Commission on Mailing Standards, better known as the franking committee, wrote in a report late last month."
Comments
I haven't looked into it myself but the comments on Slashdot claimed that it's only an effort to get some outside web servers approved for video because the government ones aren't up to it and they don't want official congressional posts to be mixed in with things like inappropriate advertisements. Still seems like an odd restriction but it's not like I'm too worried that Congress is censoring its members.
Posted by: Critic at July 16, 2008 04:17 PM
This came up on Outdoors yesterday. They don't want congress critters on twitter going straight to The People making an end-run around the Mainstream Media. I still have my NRA Official Press Pass so its still legal for me to mention this. Those were issued in response to McCain and Feingold's unconstitutional legislation. I wonder if they found any gold from that.
Posted by: The Mechanic at July 17, 2008 05:34 PM
From what I gathered from the article about this, I would have to agree that the Representative is only looking out for his constituents which means that at least one of them is.
Posted by: Kushin Los at July 18, 2008 12:26 AM