One of the coolest things about this blog is the reader mail we get. Angry messages full of typos and vitriol (”you people r going to hell!!!”), sympathetic messages from Capitol Hill staffers, questions from 6th graders who have to talk about their Congressman in class… and then there’s the messages of support form the local blogosphere.

These are some of the best to get, because they bring together all the different strands of commentary and investigative reporting that have been applied to Putnam over the years. Best new local blog we’ve found out about this way: http://aikane.blogspot.com/  (Aikane Leo… presumably a pun on Alkaline Treo?)

You can read the full Adam Putnam archives over there by going here:

Aikane Leo Adam Putnam Archives 

I’ll be posting my favorite Flashback reporting entry in a few hours when I’ve had time to read all the great stuff over there.

Hosting a website isn’t free, and neither is setting one up or keeping one going.  In order to keep this blog alive and well, we’ve added a “Donate” button to the right hand sidebar.

We hope you’ll take advantage of it.  You can donate directly to our hosting company, ensuring that your $5 donation (or whatever you want to cough up) doesn’t go to anything besides keeping this website online (not that we’d ever spend it on anything else;)

We may have a blog-raiser sometime in the future to raise some cash to pay prospective investigative reporters who contribute to this website (somebody has do some investigative reporting, and it’s not going to be the Ledger)… but that’s for a future date.

For now, if you like this website and are glad we’re doing what we’re doing, or even if you don’t like this website, but still want to see us stay online for a while, please consider donating $5 to show your support.  Thanks!

We’ve had comments turned off on the Putnam Report since launch, but in an editorial decision we’ve decided to turn them back on.  So comment away!

A young tech-savvy wikipedia user named Virgil Griffith recently created a new online program that tracks the IP adresses used to edit wikipedia pages, including what edits were made and when. The program, called wikiscanner, has caused quite an uproar as more and more organizations an officials have been traced to their not-so-honest wikipedia edits.

Now, for the less tech-savvy among us, here’s a quick explanation:

• whenever anyone uses the internet, their computer is assigned an IP (or Internet Protocol) address, which is just a long string of numbers unique to their individual internet connection.
• Wikipedia, the free and popular online encyclopedia, can be edited by anyone. However, it keeps track of which edits are made, and by which IP address.
• This new program, allows an easy cross reference of known IP addresses, with wikipedia edits.

So what does this have to do with Adam Putnam?

Well, someone in Putnam’s office (perhaps Adam himself?) has been editing the Adam Putnam wikipedia page.

Well, editing would be the wrong word, since judicious use of the delete key is about the sum of what they were doing.

Check out these sections removed on June 26th of this year,

Putnam also garnered attention when he stated “white rednecks” who “didn’t show up to vote for us” cost Republicans their Congressional majority in the 2006 elections. [http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/11/post_122.html]

Putnam also accepted at least $1,000 in contributions from disgraced Republican lawmaker Mark Foley. [http://www.capitaleye.org/foleycontrib.asp]

143.231.249.138 is the IP address used to make these edits, and it traces right back to Adam Putnam & the U.S. House of Representatives office building.

So what you have here is someone from Putnam’s office (perhaps we should ask him who?) scrubbing factual information from his wikipedia page, simply because it’s negative.

What’s wrong Congressman Putnam? Can’t handle the truth?

UPDATE: If you want more info on the Putnam / Foley connection, go to the videos section of the Putnam Report and watch Adam Putnam defend the GOP Leadership in response to the Foley scandal. It’s the video 3rd from the top on This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos.

UPDATE II: Welcome ThinkProgress Readers! Here at the Putnam Report we have been long TP readers, and think the Center for American Progress is exactly the type of independent progressive organization we need in this country. We couldn’t be more happy to get “linked” from such a prestigious blog. Come back soon!

This is officially day two of the Putnam Report, & all is well.  According to our analytics report, we had a burst in traffic yesterday up to about 75 readers (and about 200 hits).  That was up from 5 readers and about 30 hits the day before our official “launch.”

75 readers doesn’t sound like a lot, but for a local blog on its first day, that’s pretty good traffic.  If you’re one of our new readers, why not bookmark us, or add the Putnam Report to a blog-reader (like blogline).  It’s really easy to do, and subscribing to our RSS feed is a breeze!

In other news, though not a surprise, Adam Putnam voted AGAINST the SCHIP reauthorization.  Now, CHIP is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, basically it helps little kids who wouldn’t otherwise have health care, have coverage.  It is especially important for low income families w/ kids who end up with major accidents or illnesses (such as cancer, car accidents, etc).

Or to put it in even starker visual contrast, imagine the kids at your local Ronald McDonald house, or the pediatrics ward at your local hospital.  Then imagine if they kicked 2 or 3 kids out of each room for having parents too poor to afford the bill.  CHIP is the, incredibly popular, bipartisan, program from the 90s which keeps that from happening.

Adam Putnam voted against it. 

Voting against sick kids, for the sake of partisan games.  That’s our Congressman!

Rep. Adam Putnam is well known for cris-crossing the United States raising money for Republican Congressmen and political hopefuls.  Almost any night of the week you can find him on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, usually identified as the Republican Talking Head spreading partisan rhetoric to anyone who will listen.  He’s so good at these two partisan posts, that he was this year elected to the position of GOP Conference Chair, the highest ranking Republican political job in the House!

But who’s house is he in?  Who is Adam Putnam supposed to be fighting for, and who is he supposed to be fighting against?  The House of Representatives is the People’s House, and the people Putnam’s supposed to fight for are the people of our district, the people of South Central Florida.

Instead, Adam Putnam spends his time picking partisan fights with his opposition, defending fellow corrupt Republicans (as he infamously did on TV for Rep. Mark Foley in 2006), promoting the gridlock we see in Congress daily, and lowering our public discourse.

The Putnam Report aims to stop this travesty.  To force the man we elected to represent us, to - for once- represent us, we are going to shine the light on his votes, his statements, and his political posturing.  And, if Adam Putnam continues to pledge his allegiance to his party, and his DC-buddies, before the people of Florida, we will help support his replacement.  We can & will do no less.

Adam Putnam has for too long gone unchallenged, undebated, unwatched. He has risen up quickly through the ranks of the Washington, DC GOP partially because of the “safety” of his home district, FL-12.

But FL-12 is not a safe district for Putnam, or any other Republican who consistently votes with the most extremist elements of his party on issues such as The Iraq War, Health Care, Student Aid, and Immigration. The residents of Polk & Hillsborough counties are overwhelmingly moderate voters, and don’t like to be used as political capitol in the Washington DC insider games of our congressman.

We need a Congressman who is working for us, not for his own political aspirations.

Until that day comes when we have such a congressman (or woman!), we’re not going to let the congressman we have no our of our site.

From August 1st 2007 onward, the Putnam Report pledges to keep tabs on Adam Putnam, and be your one-stop-shop for everything you need to know going on in our district.

If you would like to help in this effort, please contact us, …Adam Putnam has the support of big business, his DC buddies, and the Florida GOP, but we have true grassroots energy, netroots idealism, and a commitment to change. This site isn’t meant to be a soapbox, it’s meant to be a community effort. So contact us today, to join the Putnam Report team.

A few formatting issues w/ the top bar, and occasionally the video plugin doesn’t want to work (the one in the sidebar).  Other than that, we’re just about ready to go.

The press release will be listed here when we hit our official launch.  Exciting!

This post is to test cross-browser video integration. Please leave a message in comments if you have any trouble viewing this video, or any of the randomly displayed favorite videos on the right hand sidebar. Also: if you haven’t seen this video, it’s a must see. Keith Olberman has not the nicest things to say about our good buddy Adam Putnam.

other updates:

• we’ve got at least a good working version of the top banner / logo up and running. It’s not the final version, but it’s the basic theme. What do you think? Is it too garish? Too hard to read? Let us know your thoughts & we’ll try to integrate them into the final design.
• what other features do you want to see? User diaries are out (because we want more guest posters, not more original non-frontpage content), but pretty much anything else in the blogosphere we could add. Just tell us!
• thanks tons to our great Florida Blog partners who have linked us up, even though we’re still 6 days (5 days and 23 hours) from launch!
• Technorati Profile

Sitting here w/ bloggers from around the country is truly inspiring. This is citizen involvement at its best. Local blogs from Montana, to New Hampshire, to Virginia have proven that concerned citizens can truly make a difference by simply providing oversight of their elected officials. That’s the proud tradition the PutnamReport hopes to follow.

We’re well on track to still hit our official launch date of August 7th. Some basic upkeep items:

• We’ve settled onto a theme, and gotten most bugs worked out
  • still having some FTP (hosting) issues on the backend. We’ll fix that soon. Fixed!
  • we’d still like to have some flash content, but that can be added later.
• still need to finish the top logo now in beta!
• still need a creative flavicon Done! but haven’t finished installing it yet…
  
• the donate page is up and running!
• the sign-up page will be up soon… sign up to join the Putnam Report mailing list!
• we’re still looking for additions to our team of writers… if you would like to write for the Putnam Report, use this tool here.