We now interrupt the flame war that's erupted in my last blog post about H-1B workers to bring you this breaking news bulletin: A U.S. congressman is apparently endangering our national security using -- yes, that's right -- Twitter.
This is not an hallucination induced by imbibing too many Numb Nutz (2 ounces Bacardi 151, 1 ounce Tanqueray, 6 ounces Malava Novocaine, 2 peanuts). This comes straight out of the Congressional Quarterly. To wit:
A congressional trip to Iraq this weekend was supposed to be a secret.
But the cat’s out of the bag now, thanks to a member of the House Intelligence Committee who broke an embargo via Twitter.
A delegation led by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the entire world — or at least Twitter.com readers — now know they’re there.
“Just landed in Baghdad,” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.
[Insert your own joke about Congress and twits here.]
First give Hoekstra props for actually using social media tools, instead of merely pretending to use them by having one of his assistants tweet for him. How do we know it's really him? Because of the typos, grammatical mistakes, and misspellings. No DC admin would dare to make his or her boss look so unprofessional. Also, he really! loves! exclamation points! Like this:
Headed home!Situation in Iraq improves significantly.Afghanistan poses challenges!Lots of stuff to talk about when I get home Monday late pm
Apparently, I am not the only one to notice these things. Here's Hoekstra's response:
