AirCongress The Online Voice Of Capitol Hill

Rep. Pete Olsen fainted while working out in the House gym yesterday and had to have a pacemaker installed after being diagnosed with a slow heartbeat. The Texas Republican tweeted his thanks to people after his surgery.

“Thank you for your prayers and kind words,” he wrote at @peteolsen. He then directed his Twitter followers to a statement about the incident.

Here is a sampling of other Hill tweets from today:

• @ChuckGrassley advised biz lobbyists: “I visit w/many [GOP lawmakers]. Don’t take your friends for granted. You spend all time w/Dems.
• At an N.Y. school, @chrislee_ny26 unveiled legislation to protect students from sexual abuse in schools.
• @RepBillShuster warned people away from a fake HUD Web site that “phishes” for private date.
• @clairecmc opposes any legislature’s rollbacks of minimum wage on tipped workers. “That’s how I worked my way through law school!”
• @SenChrisDodd said of Syracuse’s six-overtime defeat of Connecticut in basketball, “Tough loss … but definitely one for the ages.”

To get Capitol Hill’s inside scoop from Twitter, subscribe to “Hill Tweet News.” It’s the best and quickest way to learn who sniped at whom, and why; what lawmakers did and said in committee, on the floor, on the news shows and elsewhere; and what articles, shows, Internet videos and more grabbed their attention.

Categories: Labor, Technology, Lobbying, Crime, Hill Tweet News

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The Sunlight Foundation, an open-government group, has been pushing hard for the past few years to force a vote on legislation that would compel Senate candidates to post their campaign finance reports electronically. Sunlight took its cause to Twitter this week by telling people to “tweet” their support for the idea to senators who can make it happen.

The new media tactic caught the attention of two Democratic senators, @clairecmc of Missouri and @Barbara_Boxer of California. Boxer noted that she co-sponsored a previous bill on the topic and will do so again. And Claire McCaskill wrote: “I’ve supported electronic filing of campaign reports for a long time. It’s embarrassing that we are not required to file electronically.”

“In less than 24 hours, two out of 15 of the senators on Twitter who had not co-sponsored are now cosponsors,” Blumenthal noted on Sunlight’s blog. “In terms of grassroots outreach that is an amazing turn around.”

Here is a sampling of other Hill tweets from today:

• Why did the public lands bill fail in the House? According to @GOPLeader, it was a Second Amendment fight.
• @Senate_GOPs complained that labor unions turned a Senate hearing on “card check” into pep rally.
• @DeanHeller wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., about card check. “It could cost us 600,000 jobs by end of 2010.”
• @edlabordems posted videos from today’s hearing about lost educational opportunities in alternative settings.
• @SenJohnMcCain found a Washington Post article on Democratic thoughts about taxing health benefits “very interesting.” President Obama scoffed at the idea in the 2008 presidential campaign.

To get Capitol Hill’s inside scoop from Twitter, subscribe to “Hill Tweet News.” It’s the best and quickest way to learn who sniped at whom, and why; what lawmakers did and said in committee, on the floor, on the news shows and elsewhere; and what articles, shows, Internet videos and more grabbed their attention.

Categories: California, Missouri, Gun Rights, Politics, Health, Labor, Technology, Education, Taxes, Natural Resources, Claire McCaskill, Hill Tweet News, Barbara Boxer

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President Obama today lifted restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research that his predecessor imposed years ago. He also issued a presidential memorandum designed to prevent political interference in the scientific realm.

Categories: Producer's Picks, White House, Health, Technology, Social Policy, Culture

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Wanna know what lawmakers did today? What they said in committee, on the floor, on the news shows and elsewhere? What articles, shows, Internet videos and more grabbed their attention? Who sniped at whom, and why? Get the inside scoop at “Hill Tweet News,” a Twitter-based service of AirCongress.

Here are today’s Top 5 tweets, followed by the rest of today’s edition of “Hill Tweet News“:

• Via @Senate_GOPs, the Senate passed a short-term spending bill to fund the federal government through Wednesday.
• @MicheleBachmann warned that Congress could be “killing the housing industry once and for all.”
• @RepMikeHonda defended his “pork” for a Japanese museum in San Jose in response to an @SenJohnMcCain tweet. Honda said it will create jobs.
• @michaelcburgess wrote 15 straight tweets about yesterday’s White House healthcare summit. Here’s an excerpt from one: “High marks for style. Substance, not so much.”
• @petehoekstra mused, “Twitter founder going to White House. Does this now make it acceptable?”

More after the jump »

Categories: California, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Health, Technology, Michele Bachmann, Budget, Economy, Housing, Mike Honda, Hill Tweet News, Michael Burgess, Pete Hoekstra

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Throw a bunch of fiery politicians into the powder keg that is the Internet and it’s only a matter of time before something explodes. And so it was today on Twitter, when Sen. John McCain posted to the mini-blog service his latest Top 10 list decrying wasteful “pork” projects in the omnibus spending bill now before Congress.

The Arizona Republican posted his first anti-pork list under the Twitter name @SenJohnMcCain late last week, calling attention to projects like $650,000 for beaver management and $1.7 million for pig odor research. He brought the Top 10 list “back by popular demand” the first two days of this week. The project in the No. 1 slot today: “$951,500 for the Oregon Solar Highway.”

That dishonor didn’t sit well with Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, whose home state stands to benefit from the earmark. Tweeting as @repblumenauer, he mocked McCain.

“McCain wasn’t familiar with a Blackberry [during the 2008 presidential campaign], right?” tweeted Blumenauer, who quickly issued a press release celebrating earmarks for Oregon when the House passed its version of the spending bill last week. “How’s he supposed to understand a solar highway utilizing right-of-way to generate solar power?”

McCain is known for a fiery temper, but he’s obviously got nothing on Blumenauer.

Blumenauer, by the way, also had this to tweet about Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal last week after Jindal delivered the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress: “Jindal is weird. I can’t believe Jindal. Such a sad contrast with President. Doesn’t even look or sound good, to say nothing about content.”

I have a feeling it won’t be long before some lawmaker has to issue a public apology for something he or she says on Twitter.

Categories: Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon, Technology, Sen. John McCain, Energy, Budget, Earl Blumenauer, Bobby Jindal, Hill Tweet News

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