Canadian lawmaker insults rival on Twitter, then forced to apologize

We take a break from our regularly scheduled U.S. politics to bring you this (not) very important bulletin:

A Canadian lawmaker insulted a rival member of the Parliament on Twitter -- while the fellow was sitting at the same table.

"Del Mastro should grow up (not out)," wrote Michelle Simson, a Liberal legislator, on her Twitter profile, which has 484 followers.

Mastro, a Conservative who Reuters describes as "not slim," apparently saw the message during the meeting.

Because, well, you know, anyone in the world can see Twitter (except maybe China and North Korea), including colleagues sitting at the very same table.

Reuters writes:

[Mastro] stood up in the House of Commons in front of hundreds of legislators to demand Simson say she was sorry.

"I apologize that I'm not perfect and perhaps my stature doesn't meet the criteria that some members of the House might set but I have actually battled that problem since birth," he said.

Simson then apologized publicly, saying she had been wrong.

Maybe Simson will get a boost in Twitter followers from this Canadian kerfuffle. She's actually pretty funny and makes occasional references to "The Simpsons" (not kidding).

We wish the senators and representatives in our Congress would take a page from Simson's book and drop more off-the-cuff nuggets onto their Twitter feeds. U.S. politicians -- active ones, not Sarah Palin, who prefers Facebook -- are just so boring.

-- Mark Milian

Click here to get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And we're also over here on Facebook

Photo credits: House of Commons

President Obama: 'I have never used Twitter'

More than 2.6 million people follow President Obama on Twitter -- or so they thought. The president told a youth audience in Shanghai on Sunday that he has never used Twitter.

The @BarackObama Twitter account was a wildly successful campaign tool in Obama's run-up to the presidency last year, which staffers used to promote their candidate. Since being elected, the account is believed to have been taken over by the Democratic National Committee.

“I have never used Twitter, but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting Internet access," Obama said during the town hall. "My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."

The latter statement elicited laughs from the crowd. Perhaps because Twitter is not solely a phone application. Or maybe some recall this photo (right) from the campaign showing Obama's professed tech-savviness.

But we should point out that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama's opponent in the election, has somehow managed to write cohesive sentences on his  Twitter page here using his war-mangled fingers -- well, either that or a staffer relays his tweets for him.

Ahh! We don't know anymore!

Now knowing that the tweets don't actually come from Obama himself, followers have expressed disappointment. "I have never used" was a trending topic on Twitter this morning (meaning many people tweeted messages with the phrase) as users reacted to the news.

"Humbled," which was @BarackObama's one-word reaction to news of being selected as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, carries a lot less weight with the new knowledge. Who's humbled? Some rep at the DNC?

The White House maintains its own Twitter profile. The page, @WhiteHouse, has gained significant popularity of its own, with 1.5 million followers, in a relatively short amount of time.

But Obama -- err, whoever is typing messages under his guise -- still reaches a million more people.

-- Mark Milian

Speaking of Twitter, click here to get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And we're also over here on Facebook.

Photo credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times; Associated Press (Candidate Obama using his clumsy thumbs pretty deftly on his beloved BlackBerry).

Sarah Palin creates new Twitter acct, ditches old one 4 no apparnt reason

Sarah Palin recently started a new Twitter account to promote her new book. But what about her old one?

As Alaska's governor, @AKGovSarahPalin sent updates regularly and built a large following.

The profile has more than 152,000 followers and has made its way onto more than 1,500 lists. The latter is perhaps more impressive because that feature didn't even exist until about three months after she stopped tweeting there.

The @AKGovSarahPalin page also has the "verified account" tag, which means Twitter Inc. authorized it as a legitimate user.

But Palin has inexplicably started from scratch. The new page, @SarahPalinUSA, quickly drummed up 14,700 followers despite not having a single update or following anyone -- not even her 2008 GOP presidential partner Sen. John McCain.

But still, there's 152,000 people on that other account. Just sitting there.

On Facebook, Palin kept her old fan page, which is nearing a million fans. She simply dropped any mention of being governor from the "current office" section. Rather than promoting Alaskan legislation, it now mentions TV appearances and, uh, her new Twitter page.

Did nobody tell Palin that she can click on "settings" in Twitter and change the name of an account?

She could have easily switched the name of @AKGovSarahPalin to @SarahPalinUSA or @SarahPalinRocks or @QTPiSarahPalin or whatever she wanted.

Then, swap out the profile picture and background image, and she's set. Bonus: She gets to keep all of her followers.

Websites like Facebook and Twitter are a book publisher's dream because they let authors and promoters connect directly with fans. But they're only valuable when the pages have a lot of people paying attention to them.

Related items:

Video clips of Sarah Palin with Oprah

Oprah talks about what Sarah Palin talks about

What's actually in Sarah Palin's book

Palin's roguish book tour schedule details

The secret Sarah Palin speeches we never heard

Sarah Palin breaks with GOP to endorse Conservative

-- Mark Milian

Click here to get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And we're also over here on Facebook.

Book jacket: HarperCollins

C-SPAN talks with Ken Auletta on new media vs. old

Word on the street has it that there's something out there now called new media that's going to somehow change society in unimaginable ways. Even politics, like Obama's $750-million campaign haul last year.

And this Internet Web thingy moves fast and doesn't need wires (How is that possible?). And somehow all this change threatens the old media that hadn't changed much since Johannes Gutenberg carved his first wooden letter of type about 600 years ago.

Well, that's all silly, of course. Traditional media has changed plenty; it doesn't use wooden type anymore, for one thing.

But Ken Auletta has gone ahead anyway and written another one of his intriguing looks at modern media. He wrote it in book form, though, one of those cursor-less collections of paper pages that you open by hand to read and then turn the pages to continue. Amazingly ancient. Called "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It."

So tonight, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, who has talked very calmly with every author who's ever written a book since Gutenberg, interviews Auletta about what he found. It's pretty interesting, even without antacid commercials.

We're going to watch because we're addicted to Lamb.

So we obtained for Ticket readers a little sneak peek here of the interview. It will air on....

...the "Q&A" program at 5 and 8 p.m. Pacific tonight and again at 3 a.m. Pacific Monday. Set your TiVo, not the alarm.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of new media, click here to get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us   @latimestot  And we're also over here on Facebook.

Swine flu hits first member of Congress, a Republican

First anthrax, now this.

Swine flu has spread to Congress. Specifically, to Oregon Republican Greg Walden, a sixth-term congressman who tweeted Monday, "Just diagnosed with likely H1N1. Ugh. Off  to seclusion for awhile."

Walden is seen above during a congressional hearing in February into a deadly salmonella outbreak linked to a peanut factory. Walden wanted to know if the company's president, who repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify, wanted to sample any of the tainted products removed from the nation's grocery shelves.

Ironically, Walden is co-chair of the congressional Rural Health Care Coalition, a bipartisan group of 182 members who lobby for healthcare in rural districts. Maybe the vaccine didn't get to rural areas yet?

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

Click here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. Or follow us  @latimestot. We are also on Facebook if you can move the cursor just a little bit over here.

Don't call me a slut, Meghan McCain demands

It's Saturday. After traveling thousands of miles and raking in millions of donor dollars, both of the country's top Democrats have taken the day off. And we should too.

But before anyone reveals that Meghan McCain has her own line of underwear coming out this fall, we have to re-express our delight at the sight -- not so much of her cleavage (which, frankly, hon, we hadn't noticed until someone else pointed it out) --  but of the refreshing spontaneous spunkiness of a young woman apparently enjoying experimenting with life so much.

We're always looking to peek behind the scenes of politics here on The Ticket, to see how the pieces interact, the process unfolds, and to have some fun whenever possible.

Most days, gotta say, the fun part is hard duty given the stuffed suits offering their prefabricated pontifications and canned talking points on reams of policies and legislation that they haven't read.

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell may well be the funniest family members at their Thanksgiving dinner table. But stick those Senate party leaders in front of the ubiquitous microphones arrayed on Capitol Hill, and no one needs any Benadryl to doze.

Which helps explain the naked media coverage of the 24-year-old's flaunted ...

Schwarzenegger's 'swift action' on Maria Shriver's illegal car cellphone use: Get her a driver

That's one way to stop Maria Shriver from talking on the phone while driving -- hire an escort.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to take "swift action" on Wednesday after TMZ published pictures of his wife violating the California law prohibiting hand-held cellphone use while behind-the-wheel. And he did terminate the violation, in a savvy, edict-free husbandly fashion.

Today, TMZ comes up with video of Shriver riding shotgun in an SUV after leaving a bakery.

Who can argue with the solution? By putting somebody else behind the wheel, Shriver can legally gab on her phone all she wants. (Assuming the person she's talking with isn't her driver.)

It's not exactly the definitive answer for everyone with a cellphone-driving habit to hire someone to taxi them around.

We guess the rest of us will just have to buy one of those silly-looking Bluetooth headsets (which TMZ seems to imply Shriver also got) or abstain from traffic talks.

-- Mark Milian

Pull over to the side of the road, and click here for Twitter alerts of each Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. We're also on Facebook.

Video credit: TMZ

Meghan McCain exposes her cup size on Twitter -- maybe Republicans really are out of ideas

 

Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain, caused a stir on her Twitter page Wednesday night by showing a photo of her that can only be described as, well, titillating.

For her part, the 24-year-old McCain seemed surprised at the furor caused by the voluptuous tank-top display. Maybe she didn't get enough attention for her support of gay marriage. Anyway, when conservatives complained, she threatened to quit Twitter. Or, as she put it, "I'm getting the ...  off twitter."

"When I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, " she explained. "I had no idea this makes me a 'slut.' I can't even tell you how hurt I am."

If she's hurt by the reaction, you can only imagine how her parents feel.

Later, she apologized.

But, as one commenter suggested, perhaps the would-be presidential daughter could "put a pink bow over this photo and call it a tribute to breast cancer awareness month."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Meghan McCain Twitter image.

To arrange for incoming Twitter alerts on each new outgoing Ticket item, click here. Or follow us   @latimestot  We're also on Facebook over here.

George W. Bush gets a BlackBerry. Is Twitter next?

Former President George W. Bush just got a new BlackBerry, according to a tweet by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Stone posted a picture of him posing with Bush at a conference, which appears to be the World Knowledge Summit in Seoul, Korea, as indicated by Stone's previous tweets.

Now that Bush has his very own smart phone, Stone asks, "Will tweets be next?"

Twitter has proved to be a very effective medium for promoting books and engaging with fans.

Many politicians like Bush suspend e-mail activities while in office for fear all messages would be subject to public information laws.

If the long-rumored Bush book, a deal reportedly valued at $7 million, is indeed imminent, now seems like the right time to start building a following.

Bush shouldn't have to deal with any user-name squatters either. He appears to already own the Twitter profile for @GeorgeWBush.

Bush's longtime senior advisor and strategist, Karl Rove, who also has a book coming out in the near future, has been very active here on Twitter all year.

He's acquired some 90,000 followers from all political sides by actively sending several tweets a day with recommended articles, his observations and media appearances. And even responding to some followers.

But here's the question: How many would follow Rove's old boss?

-- Mark Milian

Bush might not be on Twitter yet, but the Ticket is. Click here for Twitter alerts of each Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. We're also on Facebook.

Photo credit: Larry W. Smith / EPA

U.S. gives up Internet oversight role via ICANN

The United States has relinquished its status as Internet supervisor.

After the Department of Defense developed the technology that runs the World Wide Web 40 years ago, the country has maintained a sort of advisory role over its continuity.

That changed significantly 11 years ago when it loosened its grip by establishing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. However, ICANN was still subject to periodic U.S. review.

That changed Wednesday.

The two entities have signed a new agreement that eliminates the U.S. reviews. ICANN now will be reviewed by a broader-based group of stakeholders from around the world.

"One thing this is not is Independence Day," [ICANN Vice President Paul] Levins said. "We were independent the day we were established. This is not somehow slipping nooses of accountability or cutting ourselves loose from the U.S."

Click over to the Times Technology Blog for Dan Fost's breakdown of the online breakup.

-- Mark Milian

Get Twitter alerts by clicking here. Or folllow us @latimestot.   Also on Facebook here.

Photo: ICANN Vice President Paul Levins in 2005. Credit: Randi Lynn Beach / Los Angeles Times