In recent years, organizations from Amnesty International to Dick Morris' Vote.com have offered insto-emailing to congressmen -- just click here to "send a virtual postcard" to everyone in the Senate and House. Another way to revolutionize democracy, right?

Except now it appears that those key decision-makers are simply trashing that stuff. Many have turned to secure outside servers, enabled with XML-driven metadata, to ensure that the only email they read comes from constituents. Apparently a bunch of politicians have simply turned their external email addresses off and only get stuff from the services.