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.”

x-posted at oxdown

If there was any doubt that our House Congressional Leaders would ever use the power they’ve worked so diligently to hoard and "keep dry," we can now put those doubts to rest. The Wall Street bailout is scheduled for 2.5 hours of debate before today’s expected vote.

from CQ:

Heading into Friday’s expected vote on the Senate-passed financial bailout bill, House leaders said they were optimistic about getting enough votes for passage, but they were whipping as though it was still too close to call.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday she would not schedule a vote on the $700 billion financial bailout bill unless there are enough votes to pass it.

First item on today’s agenda for the House of Representatives:

Senate Amendments to H.R. 1424 – Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Rep. Frank – Financial Services/ Ways and Means) (Subject to a Rule)

And yesterday, the House Rules committee met in an emergency session to report out H.RES. 1525

Providing for the consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill H.R. 1424____

1. Provides for the consideration of the Senate amendments to H.R. 1424: the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008; the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008; & the Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008.
2. Makes in order a motion by the chairman of the Committee on Financial Services to concur in the Senate amendments.
3. Waives all points of order against consideration of the motion.
4. Provides that the Senate amendments and the motion shall be considered as read
5. Provides 90 minutes of debate on the motion with 60 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial Services and 30 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
6. Provides that, notwithstanding the operation of the previous question, the Chair may postpone further consideration of the motion to a time designated by the Speaker.

x-posted at oxdown