FOUL!!! House limits incoming email from citizens?

Since we couldn’t communicate via email in to 60’s apparently the leadership of the US House of Representatives seems to believe that we don’t need it now. Email to individual representatives is being limited due to an overwhelming volume? Seriously now, we’re in the new millennium, not the 60’s. We have a right to petition our reps by email and that right should not be taken so lightly.

“We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn’t completely crash,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website and member e-mail services.

The CAO issued a “Dear Colleague” letter Tuesday morning informing offices that it had placed a limit on the number of e-mails sent via the “Write Your Representative” function of the House website. It said the limit would be imposed during peak e-mail traffic hours.

“This measure has become temporarily necessary to ensure that Congressional websites are not completely disabled by the millions of e-mails flowing into the system,” the letter reads. (The Hill)

At the risk of sounding like one of the tin foil hat crowd, this “problem” is quickly solvable and I believe it’s a matter of a lack will to fix rather than lack of ability.  That is of course assuming Pelosi and Co want individual reps to see any voter email. Utility computing resources can be utilized within days, not weeks, to provide nearly limitless scalability on demand. The knowledge to do this or understand how to contract it out should be on staff today. If not, Speaker Pelosi or her staff can contact us at thirdpipe@gmail.com, and we’ll be happy to point her at someone who can make the email work, even under load.

No new laws should be passed until we can reach our representatives. Perhaps from Speaker Pelosi’s viewpoint only marching and carrying signs is an acceptable way to petition our government. That places her squarely among the Luddites who are still stuck in the 60’s.