{"id":574868,"date":"2010-05-21T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crunchgear.com\/?p=159183"},"modified":"2010-05-21T11:00:15","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T15:00:15","slug":"hard-at-work-congress-spends-all-day-playing-with-the-ipad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/574868","title":{"rendered":"Hard at work? Congress spends all day playing with the iPad"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The iPad<\/A> is a huge hit in the United States Congress. I mean, passing any sort of meaningful banking reform is apparently out of the question with these guys , but there’s always time for the iPad<\/A>. Just amazing, really.<\/p>\n

The story is that several members of Congress, including Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, are head-over-heels in love with the iPad. My immediate reaction was, “Um, you do know that the American people have a very low opinion of you guys right now, right? It’s probably not the time to be gloating about how your $500 toy is the new hotness. There’s a lot of people out there who are out of work and would love<\/i> to have an extra $500 to blow on a shiny piece of plastic, but that’s not going to happen any time soon.”<\/p>\n

That was my first reaction. Then I cooled down a bit and thought to myself, “Well, if they’re just using the iPad to replace their BlackBerry, reading and sending e-mail to their staff, checking their calendar, and so forth, then that’s probably not such a big deal.”<\/p>\n

There’s an “iPad caucus,” too, which I guess is trying to extol the merits of the device. Said one member, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia:<\/p>\n

\n

\nWe are really trying to engage people about ways to apply this technology. This is definitely the wave of the future. … We\u2019re explaining to people that this could actually make us all more efficient, especially when you only have 24 hours in the day.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

See? Innocent enough.<\/p>\n

But then you read something like this:<\/p>\n

\n

\nA small crowd of lawmakers gathered last week in the House Republican cloakroom, cheering on Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) as he wildly steered Chaffetz\u2019s iPad in his hands, the tablet serving as the steering wheel for an iPad-compatible race car game.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Isn’t Congress great? I turn 25 next year, maybe I should run? My platform will be, “I won’t spend all day screwing around on my iPad. Oh, and I love America.”<\/p>\n

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The iPad is a huge hit in the United States Congress. I mean, passing any sort of meaningful banking reform is apparently out of the question with these guys , but there’s always time for the iPad. Just amazing, really. The story is that several members of Congress, including Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}