Today in Washington D.C. the congress adjourned for their regularly scheduled 5 week recess.  When the Democrats adjourned without voting on high gas prices, the Republicans protested by refusing to leave the house floor.

 At the risk of getting all political on you and telling you my take on this whole thing (I think it’s awesome), I’ll just highlight one of the coolest parts of this whole story that may just make you want to sign up for a twitter account (totally free by the way).

After adjourning, all of the lights went dim, the microphones were turned off and so were the TV cameras which capture every minute of the goings on of Congress while they are in session.  With the blackout, there was no way for Republicans to get the word out about their protest so Peter Hoekstra, a senior republican member of the House Intelligence Committee used Twitter to update the media and others about what was going on.

 That’s right, a protest that is almost entirely word of mouth was lead by Twitter.  Awesome.  Maybe cooler is that the Congressmen and women who remained invited tourists to come down onto the House floor and sit in Democratic congressmen’s chairs (totally not allowed while congress is in session).

There are a lot of reasons for this protest, again, which I’m not going to get into, you can read the article.  I just think it’s pretty awesome that politicians who I normally think are pretty ok with not getting stuff done would actually protest.  And to think that one of the primary ways of letting the world know about it happened via twitter.  Awesome!