US House Adopts New Third-Party Web Site Rules 49
GovIT Geek writes to tell us that third-party websites will no longer be off limits for members of the US House, provided that they use it for "official purposes" and not personal, commercial, or campaign purposes. "The rules are seen by House Administration Chairman Robert Brady as a compromise between several proposals under consideration in recent months and are closely aligned with those circulated by the Senate Rules Committee last week. [...] 'These new guidelines are a step in the right direction for a Congress that has been behind the technological curve for too long,' Boehner said. 'By encouraging the use of emerging and established new media tools, Congress is sending the message that we want to speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner possible.'"
Re:If they wanted to speak to citizens... (Score:5, Informative)
They took them away from staffers, not Congresscritters. Had you read the link you provided you'd know that. Lots of junior staffers love to leak because it makes them feel important, and Her Majesty Pelosi didn't want any premature details of the negotiations coming out before they had a deal to screw us out of yet more money.
Re:In other words (Score:3, Informative)
Altogether now, write your congressperson and ask them how they liked that slashdotting? Don't forget to tell them more is on the way. I look forward to hearing which congressional website is slashdotted today, and why.
Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's not the point. They cannot do personal things in the guise of their office. For instance, President Bush, as a person, can be racist (an example I believe untrue, but sprang to mind quickly). As President, however, he has to have a non-racist approach to running the executive.
The Rep. can maintained the linked in account, but without the offical presence of his office.
This rule doesn't affect whether Rep. X can put up YouTube videos of "My crazy weekend". He always could. But now he can put up videos saying "The US House of Representatives did X" with him speaking as part of his job.
But he must not use his those official communiques for personal, commerical or campaigning reasons.
Similar to how my work might allow youtube to host our official videos (currently, our site does it), but I still couldn't connect me to my company for political or personal reasons (or other commercial ventures.)
Re:Seems unconstitutional (Score:3, Informative)
Oh for the days before McCain/Feingold.
Do you wonder why so many politicians appear in ads saying "I approved this message"? They are legally required to do that. The 1st amendment protects freedom of speech. Requiring someone to say something is as abridging of freedom as preventing them.
Do you know that there are prohibitions on political speech (ads) within a certain number of days before an election?
Do you know that you cannot give more than a certain amount to a candidate every year? Money is a form of speech, isn't it? You can't use that money to buy airtime for him, either, which is a more direct representation of money being speech.
Read the Wikipedia entry on campaign finance reform for a good summary. In short, politicians get limited in what they can do to try to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Doesn't work, but they try.
Re:Seems unconstitutional (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't been able to find a copy of the actual rules, just a bunch of blogger rhetoric, but from what I understand this is more about the boundary between tax-payer funded media and privately funded media.
The senate and house both have official websites with pages that each of the congresscritters can use for official business. Naturally, we don't want them using taxpayer money on their campaign since it gives an advantage to the incumbents, so campaigning is forbidden on this website. The argument was about whether linking to content from personal or campaigning sites from their official site should be allowed.
There was also some concern about embedding third party content (like youtube videos) and whether it caused any technical/political/security concerns. The initial reaction was to ban embedding of third-party content (mostly because it because it wasn't understood). They are now lifting that ban with the clarification that anything on the official site must be official business even if it is hosted elsewhere.
AFAIK they never prohibited congresscritters from having their own sites, or using any third-party sites - they just had to be separate from the official site, and not funded with tax money.