For several weeks, I had been meaning to write on my local lefty-blog in praise of a Republican, Rep. John Culberson of Texas. Yes, I wanted to sing the praises of this proud GOP member to the Georgia Democratic bloggerati, because Culberson was, to put it bluntly, kicking some Democratic butt in new media trailblazing. Perhaps I am just biased about anyone who is as big a fan of the Nokia N95 as I am, but Culberson's use of the handset was defying conventional wisdom that the Left is better at exploiting the internet than the Right.

When the Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars, Culberson was live-streaming video from the NASA control room using his fancy cellphone. And while most of the presidential candidates this year have used Twitter to blast short messages to subscribers' cellphones and instant messengers, it is assumed that those accounts are being run by campaign staffers; when you get a "tweet" from johnculberson, it's coming straight from the actual Congressman's Blackberry.

I could not be more proud of an elected official's use of new media technology. That is probably why I was particularly incensed when I thought the Texas Representative was abusing it.

Last Tuesday, Culberson began Twittering, "I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them." Naturally this perked up a lot of Twitter ears; nobody likes it when their government censors things, and geeks really don't like it when they censor new media. Democratic geeks especially don't like it when it might be Democrats doing the alleged censoring. However, most of the Twitter indignation seemed to be coming from the Right, as Michael Turk of Kung Fu Quip wondered, "Why are the only people spun up about House Net rules on the right? I've seen nothing from lefty friends? Where's the transparency crowd?"

Perhaps his "lefty friends" were too busy studying the source documents that had Culberson up in arms in the first place, as I was. At issue was this: the two committees in charge of setting the rules for official House communications -- the Franking Commission and the Committee on House Administration (CHA) -- were in the process of updating some very old rules (pre-dating the modern internet) so that Representatives could embed YouTube videos on their House websites. (Apparently the in-house video hosting solution left much to be desired.) Unfortunately, the proposed update from Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA), a self-admitted techno-newbie, had all the technological foresight in this fast-evolving era that you might expect from your great-uncle Stan, who still has a rotary phone. And although the memo from Capuano was intended only to deal with the YouTube embeds issue, its short-sighted and still rather old-fashioned language so greatly alarmed Culberson that he thought the Democrats were going to end up enacting rules that would prohibit him from using Twitter.

The problem is, it's already against the rules -- or at the very least not explicitly allowed in the existing rules, which never envisioned such a thing -- for Culberson to use Twitter in an "official" capacity. The Democrats on the Franking Commission and the CHA weren't out to prohibit anything, they just weren't updating the rules regarding the internet as quickly and as expansively as Culberson would like. That is the basic conclusion I came to on my blog when I compared the Capuano language to an equally unimpressive memo from his Republican counterparts, and I might have been a little hostile about it due to Culberson's initial partisan rhetoric.

Apparently, that was good enough for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House. On Thursday afternoon, I saw a tweet from Dave Witzel, "Speaker Pelosi reads @shelbinator!"

Huh?

Sure enough, when I checked my blog statistics for recent visitors, it looked like I was about to get a subpoena from Congress:

house.gov
house.gov
house.gov
house.gov
house.gov
house.gov
...

Speaker Pelosi had crafted a letter to the Republican Minority Leader, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), and someone on her staff felt that my blog post was a sufficient citation to explain that this was much a-Twitter about nothing: "Unfortunately, inaccurate rumors have been circulated asserting that the suggested standards allowing for web video outside of the House.gov domain would affect Member blogging or use of sites such as Twitter." The Speaker pointed out that she, too, uses all kinds of social media websites that aren't handled under current rules and that, rest assured, these would all be taken into consideration as the rules were updated.

I will pause here for a moment for you to bow down before my blog.

Done? Good.

Partisan tempers seem to have died down over the weekend, and technophiles on both sides of the aisle are looking forward to making sure our Representatives use as many new means as possible to stay in touch with their constituents. To that end, the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation has launched a new website to drive home the message: Let Our Congress Tweet! The entry onto the scene of this nonpartisan pro-transparency group has probably helped the partisans lower their guns, and this should serve all of Congress well. Even Rep. Culberson looks to be in a better mood, and the rest of us can look forward to reading about less heated House business in 140 characters or less.

Of course, none of this good may have come about had not Culberson riled us all up with some extreme rhetoric in the first place. Who gets motivated to launch a whole website by a tweet about business as usual?

So, you ready to sign up for Twitter yet? More importantly, is your Congressman?

For more back story, after you've read my original post, check out Dave Witzel's three-part saga (here, here, and here) and the thoughts of the Gray Lady.