Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Who's blogging the blog ban?

Political Wire
Daily Kos
Atrios
TPMmuckracker b c d
Boing Boing
Hotline on Call
Talking Points Memo b
Think Progress
Swing State Project
MyDD
Wonkette
Corante

By the way, here was Mark's 21st update on the thread. I guess this will be another investigation by the Attorney General, if not a class-action lawsuit.
There are so many implications with Big Brother's attempt today to ban political speech from reaching state employees, who presumably just sit around and do nothing except read blogs, if you believe what they're feeding the media right now. But let me throw out one question for now.

One of the early phone calls I got this morning was from a staffer in State Treasurer Jonathan Miller's (D) office, who alerted to me to this morning's state government-wide censorship of BluegrassReport.org.

Apparently, the treasurer's office is networked through COT (Commonwealth Office Of Technology) which is run by the Fletcher administration's Finance Cabinet. Presumably, so are the offices of Attorney General Stumbo (D), Auditor Crit Luallen (D), Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R), and Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer (R).

My question is under what legal authority can Fletcher interfere or dictate what the staff of elected statewide constitutional officers can view? Is there not a separation of powers argument? Miller's staff reports to Miller, not Fletcher.

I would imagine that Stumbo would not be okay with such authority over his office by this corrupt administration.
An anonymous reader at 7:43 reported on BGR that it is only the Democratic blogs.
I can confirm that I found Republican weblogs that are completely accessible from state computers. So at the end of the day, to paraphrase, It's the Censorship, Stupid.

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