The Hill has the story. The tsunami of public interest in yesterday's congressional battle over the bailout bill brought down websites across the House.gov domain, including Speaker Pelosi's and the House Financial Services Committee's sites. In an attempt to stay afloat, the House's in-house administrators are now restricting the number of constituent emails coming into the system:

"We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov website wouldn't completely crash," said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the upkeep of the House website and member e-mail services.

The CAO issued a "Dear Colleague" letter Tuesday morning informing offices that it had placed a limit on the number of e-mails sent via the "Write Your Representative" function of the House website. It said the limit would be imposed during peak e-mail traffic hours.

As a stopgap measure when every American, it seems, wants to talk to his or her elected representative, this isn't ideal. Not ideal at all. It's no secret that Capitol Hill has long lagged behind corporate America, American universities, and, well, frankly, darn near everybody when it comes to tech infrastructure. But the House operates as an often warring federation of members, and the IT folks responsible for Capitol Hill find themselves charged with keeping a system going that, in my experience, they don't really have control over -- except, it seems, in times of crisis.

UPDATE: Ah, so much for just restricting emails using Write Your Rep -- whole thing is down.