The weight of public response to the bailout measure that's had all Congress atwitter this fortnight overwhelmed House servers earlier this week, slowing or preventing some messages to Representatives.

As of this writing, with debate underway on the floor (liveblog at the Grey Lady; video stream at C-SPAN), the writerep system appears to be functioning normally for this writer but still displays this warning:

Due to an unusually high amount of emails currently being submitted through the Write Your Representative feature (above), you may experience a slow response or error message when attempting to send emails through this system during hours of peak demand. We apologize for this inconvenience. Our technicians are working to fix the problem. Thank you.

So what's an activist organization to do?

Last Friday, the Washington, D.C. metro system broke its all-time ridership record. Odds are that by the time you're reading this, Friday's record will have fallen a few times over again.

As DCist points out, there wasn't much special about Friday, July 11 -- just a nondescript summer day that "smashed" (well, okay, barely topped) the Reagan funeral record.

But this wasn't just some random blip.

Apart from Mondays, which seem to be systematically lower-ridership days (just like with online fundraising), Metro's top 25 weekday ridership days basically reads like the last few pages of my day planner. Every non-holiday Tuesday-through-Friday date for the past four weeks is among the very busiest days of Metro's history.

On April 5, 2004, e-CRM toolmaker Kintera peaked at $17.73 a share. On that date, Bear Stearns' high was $87.53 -- a little less than five times Kintera's value per share.

At any point in the intervening four years, Kintera shareholders would have been overjoyed to trade at one-fifth Bear Stearns.

Today, they got there. Current valuations:

Kintera $0.66
Bear Stearns: $3.82

???

Profit!

"Lomans not Shamans," says stavrosthewonderchicken, taking stock.

"Conversation as intercourse. Intercourse as commerce. You know somebody's getting fucked. I think it might be us. Ad copy tattoed on our lover's forehead, and we're so inured to it that we don't even notice anymore. We're trying to make love in the middle of the marketplace, but we're just getting screwed."

(Via Wealth Bondage.)

Crazed rantings there. Best to put that one on the watch list before his next trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport Travelodge.

Kicking it at the redoubtable Freedom To Connect conclave today, and came back with a bit of darkly indistinct video of the feature presentation by Yochai Benkler.

... and ...