from TheHill.com (via The OpenHouse Project):

The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill.

As a result, some constituents may get a ‘try back at a later time’ response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote.

“We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn’t completely crash,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website and member e-mail services.

The CAO issued a “Dear Colleague” letter Tuesday morning informing offices that it had placed a limit on the number of e-mails sent via the “Write Your Representative” function of the House website. It said the limit would be imposed during peak e-mail traffic hours.

“This measure has become temporarily necessary to ensure that Congressional websites are not completely disabled by the millions of e-mails flowing into the system,” the letter reads

when i called my representative’s office yesterday, i was told not to bother emailing – if i wanted to make sure anyone would my message the only options were to fax or drop off a message at the local office.

still i think we should continue our emails – first, because a lot are getting through and second, because when we can crash the system, that tells them something about how many people care about this issue.

………

p.s. lots of amazing diaries have been posted recently on the issue of the sellout bailout, but are scrolling off the list too quickly. here are three i especially recommend (there are probably more, i just haven’t read them all):

from DBaker: “Bill Clinton defends Phil Gramm“

from Hugh: “The compromise bill was the Paulson plan“

from JimWhite: “Bernie Sanders to Henry Paulson and the rest of the rich: “You broke it, you pay for it.”