Right now, the top "trending stories" on Twitter include Jupiter, Michael Jackson, Comic-Con, Starbucks, and... the controversial F-22 Raptor stealth jet, of all things.
Earlier today, the Senate voted to kill production of the $250 million dogfighter in what emerged as a symbolic referendum on Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plan to overhaul the Pentagon's arsenal.
Responses on the short-messaging network piled in every second. "Hope & Change- A 4 Trillion $ budget, but the F-22 Raptor gets cut. Job losses to follow," tweeted jjshaka.
"Now we only have 187 for all those dogfights with terrorist planes," thomasemurray responded.
"Was great watching gates fight the F-22, heard next he was about to wrestle an F-22 to the ground on the Senate Floor," adamconner chimed in.
But Twitter didn't just give a forum to the 140-characters-or-less chattering class. The network also played an important role in the debate leading up to the F-22 vote. The Project on Government Oversight and its executive director, Danielle Brian, rallied anti-Raptor forces -- and gave minute-by-minute updates of how the fight was going. "Many senators won't commit publicly on their position re F22. why? hoping to trade for something?" a worried Brian tweeted on the 15th. This morning, she noted in an more confident tone, "#F22vote scheduled for high noon, but [pro-F-22 Sen.] saxby [Chambliss] wants it after lunch to scrape up more votes."
F-22 opponent Sen. John McCain gave a heavily-retweeted interview with ABC's Jake Tapper -- in-between short messages extolling the virtues of Abba's "Dancing Queen."
Meanwhile, Pentagon, aerospace, and Capitol Hill beat reporters followed every turn in the debate, and maybe introduced a few twists themselves. In earlier votes, Congressional panels decided to add money for seven more stealth jets.* FlightGlobal's *Stephen Trimble asked an executive at Raptor-maker Lockheed Martin about the significance of the number, then tweeted the response. "Why 7 F-22s? 'I don't know if we have a good answer for you as to why 7.'"
