I doubt there are many people out there who, at this point, haven’t heard a soundbite of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens describing the internet as a series of tubes. Not only is it funny because it revealed the bribe-taking rep as a hopelessly out of touch old man, but (haha!) he was the one in charge of regulating… well, the internet.

Unfortunately, in the three years since Stevens provided our country’s political satirists with that bit of comedy gold, our representatives have gotten more hip to the trend of these interwebs. Too hip. I’m not even talking about the myriad of internet sex scandals and other such questionable behaviors that have been all too common for our nations elected representatives in the past few years, either. I’m talking about Twittering.

“Visited a nuclear reprocessing facility in Japan and it works! Why can’t we do the same?” John McCain tweeted on April 10. Uh, because you and a load of other senators are busy micro-blogging instead of thinking about solutions? McCain further steeped himself in inanity with his next post: “unbelievable, 405,000 + followers!” Thanks, Senator. Though McCain is by far the most prolific Twitter user on Capitol Hill, he is certainly not the only one: at last count, 121 members of Congress are using cell phones and other mobile devices to update on the site.

Chris McCroskey, a co-founder of TweetCongress​.org (a website that tracks the use of Twitter), told the Seattle Times that this use of the site is a good thing for both American citizens and the government. He believes that it will get people more involved in democracy.

What it’s actually doing is turning our politicians into teenagers with cell phones, except we get our phones taken away for using them in class, while apparently our lawmakers think it’s perfectly okay to tweet away while President Obama is making a speech to Congress. This is ridiculous. I may not be cut out to be a Senator, but I have the willpower to at least pretend to be paying attention when the leader of the free world is talking.

“For the record I tweeted bfor, at very beginning & after speech,” Senator Claire McCaskill posted, after receiving criticism for blogging during Obama’s speech.

Although it is rude, it’s not so much when politicians are doing their tweeting that’s the problem, it’s the fact that they’re doing it at all. If representatives can’t tell what their constituents want without reading 140-character blog posts, perhaps they shouldn’t be in politics. Abraham Lincoln seemed to manage pretty well, and he sure as hell didn’t have internet.

Minute-by-minute updates are not going to fix the country, and politicians are wasting time on Twitter, as well as making themselves look foolish: McCaskill had waaay more than enough characters to at least spell out the word “before.” Also, Senator McCain’s criticism of federal spending on San Jose’s Japanese-American Museum prompted a Twitter debate between him and California Rep. Mike Honda that seemed oddly reminiscent of seventh-grade girls sniping at each other on Myspace.

Not only are constant updates about the lives of politicians (or anyone, really) unnecessary, they are also potentially dangerous. Back in February, Rep. Peter Hoekstra created a security issue when he was unable to restrain his need to let everyone know what he was doing at that very moment, when at that moment he happened to be traveling in Iraq. There is a reason that the government strongly discourages publicly discussing itineraries when traveling in a war zone. It would be awful if someone got hurt because Congressman Hoekstra couldn’t resist telling everyone he was on a plane.

Please, Congressmen and Congresswomen. Act like adults. There is no purpose to elected officials providing us citizens with continuous updates when you can’t provide us with change. Plus, we really, really don’t care when you’re on Leno, McCain. No one watches that anyway.