Washington legislators seem to have reached a delicate bipartisan consensus regarding the topic of the day: It's OK for Senators to communicate with their constituents via Twitter. During the summer, a Democrat House member proposed rules that would require members of Congress to disclose in all Web-communicated message whether or not they were communicating in an official capacity. Republicans balked, complaining that since sites like Twitter only allow 140 characters, they wouldn't have room to include a disclosure.

Since then, the debate moved into subcommittees before finally reaching the Senate, which according to Congress Daily, decided that Senators may "maintain Web sites or post material on third-party platforms" so long as those sites "agree to disclose when content is maintained by a Senate office" and communications do not contain "commercial or political material or links to an office-maintained page." Day of chaos, averted, indeed.

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