in reply to CGI, and fetching things from the 'address line'

I don't know much about Apache and mod_rewrite, but your rewrite rule

RewriteEngine on RewriteRule email_member/$ ?rm=email_member

will never rewrite any URL that has something after it:

http://localhost/email_member/ -> http://localhost/?rm=email_member http://localhost/email_member/x -> <unchanged>

I guess you want to expand your rewrite rule:

RewriteEngine on RewriteRule email_member/(.*)$ ?rm=email_member;session=$1

... except that I don't know (and am too lazy to look up) the mod_rewrite syntax for capturing and rewriting stuff.