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Congressman Charles Djou has decided that at least one of his constituents shouldn’t be able to follow him on Twitter.

It’s me.

At some point in recent days — I can’t be sure exactly when it happened — the person in charge of the account on the social networking site Twitter took the proactive and somewhat rare step of blocking me ().

He’s got 1,114 followers (as of 11:45 a.m. Tuesday), but I’m no longer one of them.

I realized that I’d been blocked after I clicked through to one of the congressman’s status updates from the “Charles Djou” Google alert I have set up to arrive once each day in my inbox. When I arrived at the status, instead of seeing 140 characters telling me what my representative in Congress was up to, I was informed I was not authorized to see the status and that “This person has protected their tweets.”

Strange, I thought, as I’ve been following Djou for weeks.

Maybe he just changed his settings, I thought, so I sent a request to be authorized. But after I clicked that request button, the seriousness of my rejection was spelled out in black and white: “You have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user.”

Ouch.

My stream of tweets from the people I follow will no longer include Djou’s Twitter status updates that, ostensibly, my federal tax dollars are financing. Fortunately, I can still follow his re-election campaign at , but the personal rejection from the congressman certainly stings a little. I’m relatively new to Twitter, and to my knowledge haven’t been blocked before.

The reason I’m following Djou’s actions so closely — his multiple Twitter accounts, Google alerts when he’s mentioned in articles or blogs, press releases — is that I’m covering the 1st Congressional District race between Djou and State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa for Civil Beat.

That coverage has included a Fact Check of a claim that headlined Djou’s campaign website for weeks — that a poll showed he held an early lead. We raised questions about the misleading way he presented the poll’s results.

One national Republican operative chewed me out for daring to question the techniques of a respected Republican polling firm or the reporting of a reputed political blogger at the National Journal. Hawaii GOP Executive Director Dylan Nonaka, who was the point person for the campaign responding to my questions about the poll, told me he viewed the Fact Check as a “hatchet job.”

Team Djou has expressed reluctance to work with Civil Beat on other stories. Djou has to date declined to answer the candidate “issues” questionnaire sent to Nonaka and congressional spokesman Daniel Son, though our deadline passed weeks ago. Hanabusa’s team gave us its answers in advance of our deadline. Here are the questions we asked both candidates:

1) Would you support extending the Bush tax cuts? If so, why? If not, what should be done with the tax cuts and why?

2) Should American citizens suspected of terrorism and arrested on foreign soil be held without trial? Should the government use drones for targeted killings away from the battlefield? Is waterboarding torture? Why or why not?

3) Should the U.S. ban deep-sea offshore drilling?

4) Would you support the U.S. extending its mission in either Afghanistan or Iraq? Should the U.S. consider a preemptive strike against Iran?

5) Do you support the regulation of the financial industry just signed into law? Why or Why not?

6) What is the biggest environmental problem facing the country and why? What would you do about it?

7) Do you support a cap and trade approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions or would you favor a carbon tax instead? Or neither?

8) Do you support the Akaka bill? if so, what would you tell Hawaii residents will happen if it it passes? What will it mean to the state? If not, why not?

9) What is the best thing the last Congress did? Why? What’s the worst thing? Why?

10) Transportation and infrastructure are critical to an island state. How would you work to increase federal support for Hawaii’s roads, airports and harbors?

Most recently, I authored a short story about Djou’s spending habits during his first five weeks in office. The post showed that Djou had lived up to his promise of fiscal conservatism by at least one metric. It also contained a screen shot of an official House of Representatives document that reveals the names and salaries of those federal employees that work in his office, including presumably the staffer that updates the congressman’s Twitter account. Maybe that’s what led to me being blocked?

I’ve left messages for Son, the congressional spokesman, to find out why I’m being blocked.

I don’t think I’ll be getting his response via Twitter.