The People’s Republic of Kentucky began blocking political blogs Wednesday, one day after an unflattering story on indicted governor Ernie Fletcher appearing in the New York Times quoted a Kentucky political blogger.
State employees trying to visit Mark Nickolas’ site, Bluegrass Report, would receive a blocked message from the firewall provided by Secure Computing Corporation and networked through the state’s Commonwealth Office of Technology. Employees had previously been blocked from visiting pornography, auction sites, e-commerce sites and the like.
Finance and Administration Cabinet spokeswoman Jill Midkiff said that, as part of a continuing Web-monitoring process, the state is restricting employees’ access to sites that contain computer viruses as well as those devoted to entertainment, movies, auctions, classified ads, jokes, comics, message boards and, yes, blogs. — Lexington Herald-Leader
But Nickolas disputes that claim, saying that according to state employees who e-mailed him, only blogs of a certain political persuasion are being blocked.
“It’s phony to say a website like mine doesn’t serve a legitimate purpose. People in government are developing policy and need to understand what’s going on in the state, and they can help inform themselves of that by visiting my site,” he said. “This shows the Fletcher administration’s way of dealing with dissent is to censor it.” — Louisville Courier-Journal
So far [Thursday] morning, the following conservative/Republican websites are still available for state employee viewing:
- Drudge Report
- The Republican National Committee’s blog
- Rush Limbaugh
- Hugh Hewitt
- Hot Air
- Captains Quarters
- Outside the Beltway
I’m going to do this everyday to show the fraud of this administration’s attempt at censoring political speech. — Bluegrass Report
Midkiff further said that the timing of the block had nothing to do with the New York Times piece profiling Fletcher’s criminal troubles and that the first blocks had been ordered two weeks ago.
Fletcher has been indicted on charges of official misconduct, political discrimination and conspiracy after an attorney general’s investigation revealed that he inappropriately supplied jobs to friends and political allies. Fletcher has yet to be arrested, as no one wants to be the first to arrest a sitting governor, and there’s always impeachment. Right?
How long do you suppose it will be before Homeland Stupidity is also blocked?
[Full disclosure: The author worked briefly as a subcontractor on the technical development of the Hot Air web site, one of the conservative blogs named in the article.]
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james
Jun 24, 2006
Check out http://www.proxydom.com to access blocked sites.
forstand
Jun 24, 2006
not long
Robert L. Barney
Jul 25, 2006
What are government employees doing, using government computers,
to access any web sites that have nothing to do with their job.
Government computer are NOT for personal use. I would cut off
internet access to everything that isn’t related to the job of the
employee.
Michael Hampton
Jul 25, 2006
Oh yeah? How is your system going to work? How are you going to know if a site is related to the job of an employee or not?
Besides, it seems to me that many state employees really do need access to political blogs, so that they have a little advance warning before the million people with pitchforks show up in Frankfort…
Robert L. Barney
Jul 25, 2006
Here’s how it works. Each employee has access to the sites related to
the state, and to have additional sites added, they make a specific
request with an explanation for the purpose of the site.
Are you telling me that you support the idea that employees are
surfing around the web at tax payer’s expense?
Michael Hampton
Jul 25, 2006
Wow, I haven’t been misread so badly in…oh, a week.
Most of those state employees shouldn’t even have jobs with the state. But you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the governor’s office doesn’t need to know when the political winds are blowing badly for them, and the blogs they’ve blocked provide exactly that barometer.
In a perfect world, none of this would be necessary, of course…
Jan 22, 2007
The Marker Blogs - Jonathan Klinger » ×רכיון » ב×רצות הברית יותר טוב?
Jan 30, 2007
2jk.org:: Intellect or Insanity » Blog Archive » Kfar Sava Censorship