Word: twitter
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Indeed, most of the 65 Twittering Representatives rely on their staffs to post links to press releases and notices of public events. "The feed is live now on http://dodd.senate.gov. The town hall will start shortly," reads a typical Tweet on Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd's Twitter page. But a few members like Hoekstra are braving uncharted territory, providing a unique window into the daily machinations of the nation's power brokers and, in the process, establishing a new form of civic journalism...
Members on both sides of the aisle Twittered from within their closed retreats the past two weekends. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, one of the most followed members on Twitter with more than 4,000 devotees, not only Twittered Obama's closed-door meeting last week with Senate Democrats but posted 17 Tweets from the select and secretive bipartisan Alfalfa Club dinner chaired by Missouri Senator Kit Bond and attended by Governor Sarah Palin, President Obama and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, among others. First McCaskill referenced a James Bond joke...
Tweets can also be serious. Journalists recently watched the Twitter accounts of McCaskill, Senator John McCain and Maine Senator Susan Collins for any word on the state of negotiations for the Senate stimulus package. "We're not quite at the point where I can cover 535 characters in 140 characters, but the best Twitterers in Congress are the ones who don't use it as yet another venue for tired talking points but give us a first-person look behind the scenes," says Olivier Knox, a reporter for Agence France-Presse covering Congress who has written stories after being tipped...
...celebrity Twitter feeds...
...Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that in the wake of the Hoekstra controversy, it was reviewing its policies for briefing lawmakers in advance about trips to war zones. Despite the questioning of Hoekstra's disclosures by staffers in Congress and the Pentagon, the experience has not deterred the lawmaker from Twitter. "Sure, I give [my press secretary] heartburn, but I think that's one of the things that makes Twitter attractive, that it doesn't go through a filter and a screen," Hoekstra says. "Normally, I have my staff write a press release, then I give feedback, then they rewrite...