1) Yes, it really is Rep. Culberson who is Twittering.

2) As you point out, the debate isn't so much about whether to use Twitter or not, but rather whether a Member of Congress is permitted to use taxpayer funded devices (i.e. BlackBerry) to publish “official” communications on sites outside the house.gov domain – I believe that YouTube was the original target of discussion.

Speaker Pelosi & Minority Leader Boehner fired letters off to each other re: the role of the House Admin Committee's “Franking Commission.” The commission is the Congressional body that has historically regulated this type of communication for Members (such as free postage for official snail mailings). Limiting their venues, Boehner and Culberson argued, is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

I give Rep. Culberson, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and others credit for reaching out to constituents in new ways. It's about time Congress started governing in the 21st Century without using 19th Century methods!

I also wrote about this on my blog CapitalGig at http://capitalgig.com/2008/07/09/capitol-hill-b....

What should we do about the soon to be hundreds of trillions of words in cyberspace?

How will we effectively categorize people and content when everyone and everything somehow is linked to everything else (At least by the 3rd degree)?
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and what is appropriate use of the internet by who's definition?

Now, I agree with this right wing and quite confilicted senator that they cannot take away his twitter. What they can do is penalize him for breaching federal regulations. If he does not like that, I have a wire tap, some inequalities in human rights, and a strong arm of segregation to shove in his face, along with the rest of his two Americas buddies in Congress.