Culberson and the Republican minority today had every intention of forcing a vote on domestic oil drilling in an attempt, so the story goes, to drop oil and gas prices. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, though, apparently had plans to adjourn before lunch so they could all get a head start on a five-week House recess.

$4.00 a gallon is acceptable, it would seem, until September.

The ensuing drama played out on both Twitter and Qik, a site for live video streaming from mobile devices. Just as Culberson was taking the floor, according to his tweets, to demand a vote, Pelosi turned the lights out on him.

And the TV cameras, and the microphones. 

"I am speaking now on the floor to the gallery and to you on Twitter demanding that Speaker Pelosi cancel vacation and vote to drill here now," tweeted the Texas Congressman. One wonders how he can tweet and speak, but on with the story.

Culberson, in tweet after tweet, noted how the Democrats had all left town, but Republicans were staying put and speaking on the floor without microphones, "as though it were 1908," he said, and vowed to stay until Democrats come back and vote. He may be waiting five weeks, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, Culberson pulled other Republican Congressmen to his Blackberry device for guest tweets about this situation. Minority Whip Roy Blunt, showed up, as did Ted Poe, Tom Price, and John Shimkus. Then Pete Hoeskstra, Mike Pence, Mike Rogers, and Rob Bishop, all vowing not to leave the House floor.

"Cong Todd Platts of Penn up now – he was driving home heard about this and turned around and is here calling for Congress to get to work," said Culberson.

To whom are they speaking? To themselves? Not by a long shot. Culberson went out into the Capitol and pulled tourists into the House floor so they could see for themselves. Wouldn’t you love to have been peering up into the Rotunda when Culberson came bursting through?

Five hours into the ordeal, Culberson’s still going. "I just told the House chamber We the People can take back the Capitol with these new media tools by networking and shining sunlight everywhe"

He went over his 140 characters.

That’s okay, because he’s live streaming the grandstanding party via Qik. Will Pelosi and the Democrats return? Did they have a good reason other than senioritis to cut out early today? It will be interesting to see what they have to say about it.

Pelosi’s office was aware of what was happening, and said, simply, the recess had been on the calendar for a month now, but they hadn’t commented further by press time.

But Minority Whip Roy Blunt viewed it as the latest in repeated attempts to deny a vote on drilling. "Today, their goal was to adjourn the House as quickly as they could — even as Republicans stood by on the House floor prepared to debate the merits of producing new domestic energy for the American people," Blunt said in a statement.

"Instead, Democrats gaveled the day closed, switched off the cameras, turned off the lights, cut the mics, and ran for the exits. But Republicans remain on the floor right now: ready, willing and able to lead on the most important issue facing the American people.

"But while Democrats showed today that you can run from a debate on energy, they won’t be able to hide from it much longer. It’s my hope that they’ll come back in September chastened by their constituents, and ready to work with Republicans on tackling the energy crisis facing this nation."

"They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!!"

Luckily, Revere didn’t have quite the mouthful to warn of the arrival of the Red Coats—he didn’t have Twitter, either. Culberson’s alarm was rung just hours after he discovered and tweeted about a nefarious Democrat plot to prevent members of the House of Representatives from posting to Web 2.0 citizen media channels like YouTube and Twitter:

"I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc – outrageous and I will fight them "

He still had room for "varmints" there at the end and some "green horny toads!" Shame the Texas Congressman doesn’t utilize the 140 characters available to him. He does, however, tweet with the frequency of a twelve-thumbed quail in a BlackBerry patch.

Culberson has promised all day to corner those responsible—namely Bobby Brady (okay, "Robert Brady," D-PA), who is chairman of the Congressional Committee on Mailing Standards, and Michael Capuano (D-MA)—and Qik them. His concern stems from a letter Cupuano sent to Brady regarding the Committee on House Administration’s and the Franking Commission’s approval of official content posted outside the House.gov domain.

Maybe Culberson will find out when he Qiks them, since he ignored both TechDirt’s Mike Masnick’s and Tim O’Reilly’s tweeted sleeve tugs (among others), that the letter is actually about loosening current restrictions, which regulate how Congressmen can use mass communication devices from telephones to email. That is, Culberson’s upset about an already existing law regarding official content (is a tweet official?), and has pinned the blame for it on rival party members.

Those rival party members did seem to be looking for a way to extend the Committee on House Administration’s and the Franking Commission’s authority to Congress’s use of websites and social media sites. Extending centralized authority would be alarming to any self-respecting Jeffersonian Republican, no doubt.

However, Capuano’s goal in his letter, while extending authority into where Culberson must have considered a Wild West for talkative Congressmen (it wasn’t), was to make it easier for members of the legislature to communicate to large groups of constituents outside the official government channels. As more in Congress become web-savvy and make use of web video especially, Capuano reports modern communicative possibilities far exceed the capacity of the government website. In short, we just ain’t got the bandwidth for what the hipper legislators want to do here. 

But restrictions on Congressional speech? Like it or not, they were there well before, set in place (presumably) as a safeguard against classified, incomplete, inaccurate, or damaging content being released en masse to the public by a US Congressman. Capacity for abuse? Definitely. But, unlike how Culberson seems to feel about himself, one cannot (currently) be simultaneously a legislator and a member of the press, not even the citizen media.