Twitter pointers for Canada and U.S. political junkies

Political types north and south of the 49th parallel are getting into Twitter, the micro-blogging service that lets you say whatever you want to say so long as you can say it in 140 characters or less. (That's my Tweetfeed, incidentally, over there on the left hand side of this page.)

If you want to see what official Ottawa is doing on Twitter, I'm trying to maintain a directory of what I call Political Twits. It ain't pretty, but there you'll find the Twitter handles of any MP I find on Twitter, any Parliament Hill staffer, Hill journalist, or Hill hanger-on. You'll also find a links to institutions in official Ottawa — the Canadian War Museum is a good example — as well as any hashtag I can find or create associated with the work of the federal government. My directory is not for people talking about federal politics, it's a directory of the people actually engaged in federal politics — the primary sources. As it says on the home page of that directory, if you've got something send it along.

There's a couple of other sites for Canadian Twit'n'Politics junkies. You should definitely check out the very nicely designed Politwitter and keep your eye on TweetCommons.com . I find TweetCommons fascinating because it tracks the comments directed at the politicians I'm following. One Twitterer aimed this at Michael Ignatieff:

@M_Ignatieff Are you following this or do you have aides who follow twitter? If I have questions for the Liberals, will I be heard here?

Another aimed this at Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

@pmharper Little agitated in the house today were we! Why so nice to @M_Ignatieff all of a sudden?

Now comes one of my favourite magazines, The Atlantic, with their annotated list of the Top 30 insiders in Washington, D.C.'s political culture that you ought to follow on Twitter. It's very heavy on new media/blogger personalities — personalities that, I'm sorry to say, I've just never heard of. So you need to be one super-duper-insider fan to want to follow Patrick Gavin, a writer at Politico for tweets like this:

self-pimp: Arne Duncan dishes on hoops with Obama

But I am pleased to find — and pass along — some Twitter accounts of the following, found thanks to The Atlantic piece:

• Israeli Consulate General of New York
• Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
• John McCain, Republic senator
• Mike Mullin, Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff (I just can't see our equivalent, Uncle Walt, doing this, much as I admire and enjoy Walt's company)
• Barham Salih, deputy prime minister of Iraq
• George Stephanopoulos, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News (750,000+ followers!! About as many people who watch Peter Mansbrige every night!)
• Joe Trippi, Democratic campaign specialist. (Cool tweet which caught me eye: OK, count to 60… While you were counting, 20 hrs of video was uploaded to YouTube. Thats > 86k full length films evry wk ) I became Joe's 297,560th follower by the way. Wow.