It has been fascinating to watch GOP lawmakers during the past few days take to the House floor – even though Congress has adjourned for a five week District Work Period (read: vacation) – urging Speaker Pelosi to call Members back for a vote on energy relief.

Since MSM cameras are “dark” and reporters are locked out when Congress isn’t officially in session, the only way to communicate has been via the Internet.

A massive grassroots effort has grown online with the recent launch of the new #dontgo web site that Patrick Ruffini dubs “officially a movement.”

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Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) is on Twitter @johnculberson. So is Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) @timryan. For those who don’t know, Twitter is a microblog that enables users to “tweet” out short text messages in 140 characters or less (about a sentence or two) designed to answer this question: “What are you doing right now?”

The popularity of the site has certainly grown, especially in the world of politics in recent months:

• The White House has been on Twitter for about a year.
  UPDATE 1/2009: President George W. Bush’s Twitter account (@TheWhiteHouse) was closed shortly after President Obama was sworn-in. The new account may be found at @whitehouse.
• Many presidential hopefuls were Twitterng early in the 2008 campaign including Sens. Edwards, Obama, Clinton and McCain.
• At the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) on June 23-24 in New York, Ana Marie Cox moderated a policy debate between Liz Mair (for McCain) and Mike Nelson (for Obama) via Twitter (hashtag: #pdfdebate).
• Just this past week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was Twittering live from the G8 Summit in Toyako, Japan.

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