Congressional Rep. Webcasts Hearing With Supreme Court Justices To Show How Easy It Is

from the just-like-that... dept

After a bit of a (very public) back and forth, a district court in the high-profile Tenenbaum case was recently told that it cannot broadcast courtroom proceedings online, saying that it violated certain rules. This is something that Congress could change... and it sounds like some in Congress really are interested in doing so. Rep. John Culberson, an early supporter of using tools like Twitter and Qik to communicate with constituents, apparently pulled out his camera phone in the middle of a hearing with Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Thomas and started broadcasting live to his website, trying to show them how easy it is to do these days, and why they should allow broadcasting of court proceedings in action.

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Internet Used To Keep House Of Reps. Broadcasting After Closure

from the don't-stop-us-now dept

If you watch the way Congress acts some of the time, you could easily mistake them for kindergartners at times, with the way they have petty grievances and blow attacks on each other totally out of proportion. Both parties engage in these silly petty spats from time to time, so this is hardly a partisan thing -- though, fans of each party tend to highlight it when the other party acts this way, and ignore it or brush it off when their own party does. Belonging to neither party, and not liking either party, I have no horse in this race, but do find what happened on Friday in the House interesting. For the sake of keeping this from being a partisan post, I'll leave out the party names, though I'm sure in the comments partisans of either side will be sure to make it clear how evil the other one is.

Anyway, one party wanted to discuss some new energy legislation and the other did not. The party that did not, decided to adjourn and shut down the House for summer "vacation" (which is usually more like "go back to my district and campaign to be re-elected" time). Some members of the other party, though, chose to stick around, even though the lights and microphones were turned off and the C-SPAN broadcast was turned off. Not only that, but they continued making speeches about the energy bill and "broadcasting" what was going on using social media tools like Twitter and Qik. Much of this campaign was led by noted early adopter Rep. John Culberson, who has been fighting hard to make such tools acceptable in the House (though, all too often in a highly partisan manner).

Either way, no matter which party you support (or if you support neither), it is cool to see Representatives learning to make use of these tools to better connect with constituents and (sometimes) to route around some of the petty rules used to shut down debate. Now, if we could just figure out a way to get each side to stop playing silly games, while then getting each side to stop automatically blaming the other for shutting off debate (when they would do the exact same thing if roles were reversed), we might actually get somewhere. Unfortunately, I know of no such technology that's likely to do that any time soon.

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Rep. Culberson Finally Admits The Problem Is The Existing House Rules

from the about-time dept

Last week, we were among the first to point out that Rep. John Culberson was wrong in trying to paint a picture of a group of nefarious Democrats trying to block him from posting to Twitter or Qik. The problem wasn't the Democrats -- but existing house rules. We pointed this out both in the blog post and in a direct Twitter to Culberson. He responded to each, but his comments continued to insist that the problem was the new proposal from a few Democrats rather than the existing rules. That made it into something of a partisan fight, with a bunch of political blogs jumping in and supporting "their side."

In a NY Times interview, Culberson still seems to be positioning this as some sort of partisan divide, but buried in the middle an interview with Tim O'Brien (that he apparently did right after the NY Times interview) Culberson finally admits that he was wrong:

"I agree and I never should have brought up Democrat or Republican.... My goal is to shine a light into the Congress and I'll keep partisan labels out of it. And I'm going to stay focused on the goal.... The two things the internet has helped me do is the community has helped me understand to keep the partisan labels out of it, that's good advice which I have taken to heart. And the other good advice I got was that I mean and actually through this debate and TechnoSailor in particular, I think his name's Aaron, had some really good posts on his blog that kind of when you walk through his and a couple of other good blogs out there, I realize that I was targeting the wrong thing, that the existing rules make it illegal for me to post on Twitter, to post on a Qik website, under existing rules I'm operating in the Twilight Zone. So they're correct and it helped me realize my focus need to be that the Congress should treat congressional access to the new social media in the same way that Congress treats our access to the old traditional media."

It's sort of buried in there, but he does admit that he was wrong -- the problem is the existing rules, not the new rules, this isn't a partisan issue and he's already in violation of the existing rules by using Twitter and posting to blogs.

And yet, we still have political bloggers pretending this is a partisan issue. Being neither a Democrat nor a Republican, one of the things I like about most technology issues is that they're non-partisan. It would be nice if they stayed that way so we could focus on the actual issues, rather than flinging mud at political opponents.

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Politician Using Twitter To Ignite Misleading Partisan Fight Over Politicians Posting To Twitter

from the politics-as-usual dept

Last month, I posted how cool it was that Republican Congressman John Culberson was really using Twitter to communicate with people. It was a great use of the technology. However, today he's been using Twitter to ignite a totally misguided partisan war, pretending (falsely) that Democrats are trying to prevent him from using Twitter. First, he announced on Twitter that "the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter" claiming that "They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!!" Fascinating, and troubling, if true, but it's not actually true.

The actual issue is one that we discussed a few months back. Existing House rules actually forbid members of Congress from posting "official communications" on other sites. This was first noticed by a first-term Congressman who was worried that posting videos on YouTube violated this rule. Other Congressional Reps told him to not worry about it as everyone ignored that rule, and no one would get in trouble for using various social media sites such as YouTube. However, that Congressman pushed forward, and eventually got Congress to act. Of course, rather than fixing the real problem (preventing Reps from posting on social media sites), they simply asked YouTube to allow Reps to post videos in a "non-commercial manner." YouTube agreed, and that was that.

However, the existing rules still stood. Culberson's complaint stems for a letter (pdf) sent by Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano, suggesting that the rules actually be changed to be loosened to deal with this situation and make it easier to post content on various social media sites. Culberson, however, bizarrely claims that this is the Democrats trying to limit what he can say on Twitter. But that's actually not at all what the letter states. The problem isn't this letter, but the existing rules that are already in place. In fact, based on the letter, it would appear that this would make it possible for Congressional Reps to Twitter, so long as their bio made it clear they were Reps.

A bunch of people tried to understand this, and even I asked him to clarify why the problem was with this new letter, as opposed to the existing rules. His response did not address the question at all -- but rather was the identical response he sent to dozens of people who questioned his claims. He notes that based on the letter, each Twitter message must meet "existing content rules and regulations." Indeed, but the problem is that's already true based on those existing content rules and regulations. The problem isn't this new effort, but those existing rules and regulations, which mean that his existing Twitter messages violated the rules.

It's really disappointing to see someone who had embraced the technology use it to try to whip up Twitter users into a frenzy, while misleading them to do so -- and then not using the tools to respond to actual criticisms. The problem here is that the existing rules for Reps is problematic. It's not this new effort to loosen the rules, other than in the fact that the loosening of the rules might not go far enough. That's not, as Culberson claims, an attempt to censor him on Twitter, but simply an attempt to loosen the rules with a focus on YouTube and (most likely) with an ignorance of the fact that Twitter even exists.

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Politicians Embracing Technology To Actually Communicate With Constituents

from the warms-my-heart dept

There have been plenty of stories over the years about politicians (especially presidential candidates) embracing the internet. However, they're usually focused on bringing together communities of supporters, often for fundraising purposes. There hasn't been as much where it's really about the politician actually communicating directly with the people he or she represents. There was a period of time when politicians started using email, but most have since locked down the ability of people to contact them via email, limiting it to cumbersome forms. However, it appears that some politicians are figuring out ways to actually use technology effectively to directly communicate with the people they're supposed to represent.

There was some buzz this evening (I'm guessing kicked off by a post by Robert Scoble about politicians embracing technology in DC) with people pointing out that a Texas congressman named John Culberson has his own Twitter account. If you look at it, it's pretty clear that it's Culberson himself who's using it -- and he's actually talking and listening to what people are saying to him. He's also using the mobile phone video streaming service Qik to shine some sunlight on what actually happens in Congress -- and even tried (but wasn't allowed) to do a video with the President from the Oval Office, but was stopped by the Secret Service. There's another congressman named Tim Ryan who is also on Twitter, though he's not following anyone else or talking with anyone else -- just communicating one way.

This evening, Culberson also hosted a "Virtual Town Hall" meeting on his own website. Apparently he's been hosting town hall meetings via a phone system which dials a bunch of constituents in his district and lets them ask him questions -- but he expanded it tonight to the internet using Ustream, broadcast video and allowing text chat too. Watching the video, you see quite clearly that it's just him talking directly to people. There's no one "screening" the calls or limiting who is saying what to him -- and he's not shying away from questions at all. Whether or not you agree with him politically (and there's plenty I disagree with him on), it's fascinating to see an elected official in DC actually embracing technology to communicate directly with people in a way that isn't just him broadcasting a message to people. It's also impressive to see politicians using technology to communicate with (not to) people, rather than hide from them (or just to squeeze money out of them). Hopefully other politicians will start to do the same thing.

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