A Congressman's Use of Twitter Causes Much Twitting

A post by author Mike Masnick at this link on techdirt describes a fuss in Congress about an elected official's use of the Internet to get involved what the author describes as a partisan battle. It's great that the congressman himself weighs in on the comments section of this blog. What a lively discussion.

I'm intrigued by one of the comments from a reader at the end. If I remove some of the partisan elements, this is what the person wrote:

"Judging from the time he spends twitting & videoing & raising campaign funds,& meeting with oil companies/driller/producers that"I proudly represent" one can see that he has little time to read and comprehend legislation & regulatory issues. Once he does, perhaps he will back down and apologize."

This reminds me of a theme that came up in my little controversy. Is the time spent communicating via Twitter or a blog worth it when the elected official could be spending the time studying an issue? To me, communication is crucial to the understanding of government. And yet an official can always be better educated. It's a good question, and perhaps there's no easy answer. It just feels odd to me that a person can be criticized for communicating, and I feel I myself need to understand better the root of the concern.

(It's also worth reading the post, even though it and the comments are long, because clearly the federal rules about the use of the Internet in Congress are complicated...)