The Congress you have tried to reach…

In the wake of last night’s call by President Obama for people to contact their congresspeople to urge a solution to the country’s debt crisis, a lot of people apparently are. The U.S. House of Representatives Web site has crashed. Its front page is available, but the individual member sites are not.

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Getting through by telephone isn’t much easier. An e-mail from the House call center said the phone lines to the Capitol are jammed:

“Due to the high volume of external calls, House telephone circuits serving 202-225-XXXX phone numbers are near capacity resulting in outside callers occasionally getting busy signals,” the email said.

In an age of voicemail, when’s the last time you heard a busy signal?