Sunlight Foundation

In today's carefully stage-managed Washington, the last thing anyone expects from members of Congress is candor or spontaneity. So perhaps it's not all that surprising that Representative Pete Hoekstra unwittingly triggered a maelstrom of criticism last weekend when he Twittered about his trip to Iraq. "Just landed in Baghdad," the Michigan Republican typed on his BlackBerry, alerting the nearly 3,000 people who have signed up to follow him on the social-networking service of the trip that he and five others, including House minority leader John Boehner, had embarked on. Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, took exception to the criticism from both the left and right that he had somehow jeopardized the security of those on the trip through his messages, or Tweets. "On this trip, nothing was classified as secret or top secret or anything like that," Hoekstra told TIME. "A whole range of people know about the trip, people with no security clearances, including my wife." (Read a Q&A with the first Gen Y Congressman.)