No state employees allowed between 8 and 4:30 local time

A couple of liberal/Democrat blogs are reporting that the state is lifting its proxy server-level ban on blogs that was instituted in the Fletcher administration.

Even though we are a blog whose pages would be opened up to state employees at work as a result of this action, we do not support it. In fact, we denounce it wholeheartedly. We don't want state workers reading this, or any other blog, while they're on the clock. We want them to be working.

Except for a very small handful whose job duties require it, state employees aren't being paid to read blogs or news sites on state-owned computers, across the state network, on state time. State IT policies, in fact, expressly prohibit the expression of personal political opinions over the state network and this would include posting to blogs.

So if you're reading this on a state computer, please click the little "x" in the upper right hand corner of the page and close this blog. You are more than welcome -- and in fact, are encouraged -- to read this blog at home or at a public computer such as can be found at a library. But if you're at work, you need to be working instead of reading blogs.

State officials say they're going to put measures in place to make sure that employees don't waste time reading blogs, but even that shouldn't be considered the go-ahead for them to drop in and take quick glimpses. Some agencies, most notably Transportation, have strict policies concerning Internet usage and those policies prohibit any kind of personal use of the Internet, including shopping, bill payment, online banking, and .... wait for it .... blogging. These acts can lead to firing on the first offense, so state employees should take care while they're on the 'Net.

But we'd hope they'd be conscientious enough not to read blogs on work time anyway. Mark Nickolas thought it was of vital importance that state employees have access to his lies and slander on the nearly-dead bluegrassreport.org site while they were at work; so much so that he filed a lawsuit against the blog ban. And he couldn't understand why conservative bloggers like David Adams at Kentucky Progress not only did not support his position, but adamantly opposed it.

We guess the concept of working on work time is foreign to Nicklolas and his successors in the Kentucky Dem/lib blogosphere who are popping corks in celebration at the thoughts of state employees wasting even more time at work instead of working in this day and age of the alleged budget crunch.