zenpundit.com

This may cause my friend Jeremy some dismay, but he gets a hat tip for this link:

Democrat Michael Capuano Tries to Stop Members of Congress from Using the Internet

Speaker Pelosi weighed in on the matter:

“We share the goal of modernizing the antiquated franking regulations to address the rapidly changing realities of communications in the internet age. Like many other Members, I have a blog, use YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Digg, and other new media to communicate with constituents, and I believe they are vital tools toward increasing transparency and accountability.”

So Pelosi is good on this stuff, as she should be.  She has an exceptionally talented New Media staff who can do great work because there are no Franking Restrictions on leadership offices.  The right is largely correct on the substance of their claims, though they are making some partisan accusations that aren’t grounded in a real understanding the problem.  Soren Dayton at the Next Right asserts that Pelosi is violating the rules through her use of social media, because he didn’t know that leadership offices aren’t subjected to the rules.  What is actually going on is that Pelosi’s excellent use of blogging, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Digg is unwittingly providing an extremely successful pilot for how members and committees can and should use the web to interact.

I had not realized that either and I thank Matt Stoller for the information in his post. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi uses her considerable authority to push through better, common sense, rules for the House to allow rank and file members to have the online presence that she has created, I’ll be more than happy to retract my previous remarks and apologize.

Was admitted to the beta test version of uber-cool Sliderocket.

About damn time. Unfortunately, it’s too late to start fiddling with some of my old powerpoints. Have to do that this weekend.

An op-ed piece with an evening deadline.  I will return to normal blogging when finished.

UPDATE:

Whoa! That took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Dang – I’m rusty! LOL! I’ll post a link here when and if it runs.

Prior to blogging, I was a pretty fair writer of formal papers, academic listserv discourse, letters to the editor and op-ed kinds of writing. Getting into gear as a blogger gradually killed those activities off and as blogging-style writing puts a higher premium on speed, insight and relevance than on grammatical precision, polish and elegance, I found getting through this assignment tough going at first. Much like putting on a suit from a few years ago – not everything fits quite right. At least first.

Very good for my brain though and it gave me a chance to shift my perspective and reflect a little more deeply on how I was writing and not just the substance of what I was writing about. Clarity matters. Words matter. A tight limit on word count disciplines a writer to be more concise, more economical with their prose. I cut at least a quarter from the first draft and put in only half of the points from my notes that I had thought were important. They all weren’t. In retrospect, some were only mildly interesting or gratuitous and would have distracted the reader. A good lesson here for me to make an effort to try my hand at op-eds more frequently, if only to keep myself sharp.

For the readers out there who are bloggers – how has blogging affected your writing ?

I thought the internet rules issue for the House of Representatives might be dying down when Rep. Capuano issued a heated denial of intending to censor or restrict access to social media. Unfortunately, that denial contrasts 180 degrees with what Rep. Culberson claimed was said by Capuano at a meeting on the subject:

“Cong Capuano confirmed to me today that rule will limit Member video posts to approved sites w approved content w disclaimer &  He said text/blogs/Twitter social media sites next. My analysis correct: we could only post approved content on approved sites w disclaimer Twitter would be prohibited to Congressmen because We the People are free to post political comments recommending who to vote for or against”

We are now down to the point where one congressman or the other can only be a liar. It should be evident as to whom within a few days.

If you are inclined to believe, as am I, that the Democratic Party leadership fears that their longterm electoral and legislative success depends upon restoring at least some semblance of the liberal dominance over public debate that prevailed in the pre-internet, pre-talk radio, pre-cable TV days by rejiggering the rules of the game, reviving the “fairness doctrine” and initiating regulations on political speech online – then you might wish to check out Let Our Congress Tweet.

My favorite part of the dual ZP-Chicago Boyz deluge were the anonymous proxy visits in the sitemeter on the issue of House rules on internet use. Good Lord – who do they think is watching for them ?