Tweeting the Civil War

This is pretty cool if you're on Twitter (and who isn't, these days?); The Washington Post is tweeting the events leading up to the secession of South Carolina:

The Washington Post is tweeting the events leading to the secession of South Carolina 150 years ago, in the words of the people who lived it -- from journals, letters, official records and newspapers of the day, particularly The Washington Evening Star. Follow us.

There are four "accounts":  Abraham Lincoln, Governor Pickens, Letters, and Press Reports that you follow.  Pretty cool.

Karl Rove is Creepy?

Har! Meghan McCain is creeped out because Karl Rove is following her on Twitter!

"Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy. I joined Twitter a few months ago; so far, it has been a liberating way to transition from political to personal blogging. It’s allowed me to share the less-serious aspects and humorously uncensored moments of my life. But there’s also been a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits. We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people."

She says she finds Karl's tweets "boring."

She DOES realize, doesn't she, that she has over 24,000 followers? And that Karl Rove follows lots of folks, myself included.

Meghan says Karl's tweets are "boring." Here are some of her more recent revelations:

"Now more important things, my sister went shopping for her prom dress yesterday! I can't believe it! I'm rooting for the pink or turquoise."

"So excited I don't have to work today! Yeah for Sunday!"

"Listening to Lady Gaga, drinking gallons of diet coke and trying to calm down and get this speech down cold."

Now, I'm not bashing Meghan; I follow her, too. I guess I'm creepy.

More Pork, Please

Ray Charles and "Here We Go Again" is the theme music for this post.

Congress is preparing to lay their new $410 spending bill on us as the new budget cycle begins. Republicans are deriding the bill as "the cherry on the stimulus sundae" but you can be sure they have their own earmarks in this one as well.

The budget process begins Thursday as Obama releases his 2010 budget plan. On top of the Porkulus bill, this might truly be too much to take!

Last night Michelle Malkin posted a link to Capitol Hill staffer Tom Jones and his twittering of the bill; he's going through it with a fine tooth comb and identifying the pork.

Some of his findings?

awesome $200K #pork for "Tattoo Removal Violence Prevention Outreach Program" amazing. $$$ to get rid of gang tats. pg283

$5.8M earmark for "Ted Kennedy Institute for the Senate... for the planning and design of a building & an endowment" p.232

omnibus has $95,000 earmark to "combat obesity" - how about less pork?

earmark to the stars?? $2M for "for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii" Really? pg. 332

National Council of LaRaza gets $473,000 earmark in #omnibus from Sens. Bingamen and Menendez

Follow his twitters and see what he finds today!

Technology Gone Amok

The Rocky Mountain News is under fire this week because one of their reporters "Twittered" the funeral of a three year old child who was killed when a pickup truck crashed into a Baskin Robbins. This is the lowest, sleaziest thing I've heard lately (outside of politics!). How callous!

The reporter was allowed into the funeral and once inside he sent play-by-play "tweets" to his newspaper website. For those who don't know what Twitter is, it's a social networking site where you can send "tweets" or updates from your cell phone or your computer of your daily doings in 140 characters or less. I'm on Twitter and I think it's kind of fun; I've networked with lots of other teachers around the country and learned some things from them. Some people on Twitter are just funny and send out entertaining Tweets (Fireland comes to mind); but to use this technology for a child's funeral goes beyond insenstive to me.

One of my pet peeves is someone texting in a movie theater. How distracting and rude can it be to text throughout a funeral? How could this guy think nobody would notice? This all goes to the idea of technology etiquette in our culture. Cell-phone etiquette is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. I hate being in the grocery store or a check out line somewhere and having to listen to someone's cell phone conversation. I hate being in a restaurant enjoying my meal and having Mr. Important five tables over broadcasting his importance to the whole place. Ugh!

At any rate, I think both the reporter and the paper in this case are at fault. The paper's defense is that the community was grieving and also wanted to be included in the funeral. I think there must have been a better way.