#thingsthatarecool

 Sam Biddle — If you're embattled Barack, and you can't seem to get the kids together to agree on a meltdown-averting debt deal, what's the next best thing? Crashing your political opponent's website and phone lines. DDoS is officially in!

The (inadvertent) data-reaming occurred after Obama asked backers to voice their support for a Democratic debt solution. Call your representatives! That's the American way. Except when everyone does it at once, congressional servers crash: John Boehner, the fiscal Magneto to Obama's Prof. X (Hey, he was a professor), had his site go down for hours. But the destruction was bipartisan, All Things D reports:

Others down as of 8:30 am Pacific time were those of Elliot Engel, Democratic representative from New York; Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina; and Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the Republican from Minnesota now running for president. (Bachmann's appears to be variously up and down, but slow to respond.)