Update: A Day Smith Probably Is Hating About Now

Today is shaping up to be a great day for Smith Watch, and probably a nightmare for Rep. Adrian Smith.

SCHIP

When I posted my reports on Smith misleading constituents about SCHIP, I then put a more concise article in a point/counterpoint format, and posted it on the New Nebraska Network. At the time, I also decided to email the same thing out to the major news organizations around Nebraska, if only to show them that Smith was not being honest. My hope was that they would at least start putting counterpoints to Smith's statements on the issues, instead of just publishing his comments without challenge.

I was thrilled and amazed when I got contacted by the Grand Island Independent. They decided to publish it!

The article was pushed in todays newspaper: Adrian Smith's SCHIP claims refuted.

They edited, but did it very well, keeping all the necessary points in there. I may like to give the Independent a hard time about their reporting, but I do have to say that I appreciate the fact they will allow differing opinions to be published. It's great to see the facts were finally put front and center!


BLOCKING ACCESS TO OFFICIAL SITE

When I reported this weekend on the fact that Smith's Official Government Website is purposely blocking Blogspot.com traffic, I decided to also post the information on the New Nebraska Network. What's great about the network we have in Nebraska is that progressive bloggers will support each other.

The story struck a cord, and with their great help, it's started to go "viral" today. And not just locally, but nationally as well. Here is the list of websites it's posted on so far:

DIGG: Republican Congressman Blocking Web Traffic from Bloggers

MyDD: Afraid of Bloggers: Republican Congressman Blocking Access to Public Website

NEALO.COM: Adrian Smith Fears Blogs

IOWA INDEPENDENT: Small mention

DAILYKOS: GOP Congressman Blocking Links From Blogs

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Republican Congressman Cuts Off Access To Official Website From Bloggers

NEBRASKA DEMOCRATIC PARTY: "Smith Watch" Gets Under Congressman's Skin

KXMB-CBS12, BISMARK, ND: Republican Congressman Cuts Off Access To Official Website From Bloggers

SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION (Congresspedia): Web Rule #1: Link to other sites on the Web


FURTHER UPDATES:

This morning, I contacted the office of Congressman Adrian Smith. I tried to speak with Charles Isom (communications) or Jeff Shapiro (Chief of Staff). Jeff wasn't available and Charles was busy. I left a message on Charles' voicemail to contact me on this matter. As has happened in the past, I never got a return call. I didn't expect it. It's not normal for them actually answer requests for phone calls from me. I was willing to provide a chance at a response.

This afternoon I received a posting from a firm called GovTrends. You can see it below, as I will post their comments, but before I was going to do that, I wanted to verify. Sorry, I don't take them at face value. Plus, it was pretty pathetic that, once again, Smith's people just chose to not speak with me. At the same time, I had been waiting for this to happen. The tech that found the problem had even said they would try to pull this, but not really believable.

I went ahead and called them, after seeing that their site said:

GovTrends is a full service web studio and online strategy firm focused on serving high profile political and corporate clients.

Whenever I see the word "Stategy", that comes to close to being a "persuasion" firm, like Targeted Creative Communications.

They verified they run websites for other members of Congress. I asked who they were, they refused to tell me, saying "it's confidential". Doesn't matter that they are being paid with my tax dollars to set up and manage official government websites. Doesn't matter that every dollar spent by members of Congress through their office is public information, and hence, so is who they are giving it to. That arguement didn't really budge the guy. He just told me to send an email request, then, and they'd do some tests first. That perked up my interest. In other words, were they going to fix it? How, I don't know, but his refusal to be cooperative in verifying what he said sure didn't sit right.

He said, as you can see, their servers are set by default. He kept on wanting to tell me about some site on the internet that tells about the biggest spammers, and that blogspot.com was one of them. I told him I didn't care about that.

So, we have Smith's office continuing to refuse to comment on this, and a provider wanting us to take them at face value.

So let's look at some of the clients that they serve, as noted on their site:

- JP Morgan
- NYC Health
- Sirius Satellite
- Snapple
- Godiva Chocolatier
- WebMD
- Wharton: University of Pennsylvania
- The Bahamas

So far, their own site and the ones I've tested that I can see they run have all been accessible through Blogspot.com. So, that leads to the question: Is this automatic blocking only occuring on servers for members of Congress? Is that even believable? And just how many members of Congress do they actually work for since they're not providing a list?

Unfortunately, this has only led to further questions about Adrian Smith's website issue. Especially since this wasn't an issue until this firm was hired to create a new site for Smith. The new version had gone up sometime in July. The thing is, I used my own site to go to the links I've set up, and I don't recall this ever being an issue except for the last 2-3 months, AFTER the site was updated.

We will wait and see if Smith's people or this firm want to be more forthcoming....


ANOTHER UPDATE:

Now they're claiming that Congressional sites ARE ran through a seperate server and using a different spam filtering program they got from gotroot.com. That still doesn't seem right. And they'll change it only if they feel blogspot.com won't send through too much spam and affect their "clients". Of course, they don't explain just how spam will affect OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT SITES.

In the mean time, Adrian Smith and his staff remain silent, letting the provider take the rap. What a great bunch of people!!