Now that USA Today will start paying bonuses based on page views, we can expect more stories like these:

There was a time when Arizona Sen. John McCain was stuck in the dark ages when it came to computer technology. During his 2008 presidential campaign, the GOP nominee said he didn't use e-mail.

Snooki from Jersey Shore changed all that for McCain. Now McCain's one of the top social media users in Congress, and Twitter has become the veteran senator's best friend.

"We get a much larger response from twittering something than we get from a regular press release," McCain told reporters today at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "It is fundamentally restructuring the whole nature of information and how it is dispensed in America."

McCain said his now-famous Twitter exchange with Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi from the popular MTV show about a tax on tanning salons in the nation's health care law got him more news coverage than any statement he's ever made about foreign policy or the military — two of his fields of expertise.

BTW, as we cut funding for schools, healthcare, daycare and everything else besides prisons, can someone remind us again why we should never consider taxing tanning salons?