Now the story is that this was part of a long-planned move to block state workers from looking at all blogs -- regardless of political persuasion -- as well as other Web pages, such as humor and entertainment sites.
Just what is a blog can be hard to define, which is why some GOP-leaning blogs hadn't been cut off as of yesterday. State employees will still have access to traditional news sites, but not to blogs.
Mark Routledge of the Commonwealth Office of Technology told talkingpointsmemo.com that "I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion about whether blogs are news or not." He said that COT was trying to prevent "sharing information of things that are not relevant to work."
This echoed a point made by David Adams, commenting on my previous post: "State workers shouldn't be spending a lot of time on political websites while they are on the clock."
In other words, it's less a political freedom of speech story and more the usual argument about limiting employees' use of technology for personal reasons rather than work.
It was a better story the other way. But that's the fun of blogging -- go with the conspiracy theory one day, correct yourself the next.
