Fun With Stifling Dissent

So I'm considering moving the focus of this blog more local, or at least providing a few more So-Cal stories per week. WE've got a big election coming up here, and Angelides frankly needs all the help he can get. So I wonder if it'll ever get to the point that it has this week in Kentucky.

The Bluegrass Report is a blog about Kentucky politics. The proprietor, Mark Nickolas, has had a lot to write about, since the Governor of the state has endured a slew of indictments to his staff over a patronage and corruption scandal. So the other day, the governor told bold action: he censored The Bluegrass Report to all state employee's computers. This happened a day after Nickolas was quoted in the above-linked New York Times story.

The governor's office responded that they had blocked all blogs, but this didn't hold up to scrutiny.

UPDATE #7: From a source within state government:

The only Kentucky-related blogs other than yours that appear to be blocked are at blogspot.com. I think it's safe to say you have been singled out.

ACCESSIBLE

NKY Politics (Pat Crowley)
http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/gov2/

BLUEgrass
http://www.bluegrass.typepad.com/

The Bluegrass Policy Blog (Bluegrass Institute)
http://www.bipps.org/blog/

The Bridge (Dr. Ted)
http://thebridge.typepad.com/thebridge/

Conservative Edge (Brian Goettl)
http://www.conservativeedge.com/

KYKurmudgeon (Larry Dale Keeling)
http://blogs.kentucky.com/kykurmudgeon/

The Rural Blog (Al Cross)
http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/IRJCI/blog.htm

BLOCKED

BlueGrassRoots
http://www.bluegrassroots.org/

The Compassionate eCommunity (Jonathan Miller)
http://compassionatecommunity.blogspot.com/

Kentucky Progress (David Adams)
http://kyprogress.blogspot.com/

Kentucky Republican Voice
http://kyrepublicanvoice.blogspot.com/

The Kentucky Democrat (Daniel Solzman)
http://kydem.blogspot.com/

This was later confirmed.

The major national blogs started reporting about this, only to see THEIR sites blocked. One wonders if there was a full-time "official censor" scanning Technorati for postings and blocking the sites. Maybe I can get banned in Kentucky too! In fact, let's start a "banned in Kentucky" contest. I'll offer a free link to any site that gets banned in Kentucky. Let's build a "Banned In Kentucky" blogroll!

Censorship of this kind is ridiculous and just makes an out-of-touch, sinking Republican Administration in the Bluegrass State look just that much more out of touch. There are those out there doing their best to brand bloggers as "fascists" and "maniacs" (no, really, read the link), but really they're just people expressing opinions. This is anathema to the politicians and gatekeepers of the discourse who demand that they'll be the ones expressing opinions around here, thank you very much.