Department of the Interior Censoring Conservative Blogs?

It has been widely reported on conservative blogs that the U.S. Department of the Interior has blocked employee access to conservative blogs.

This has resulted in some speculation that Clinton era holdovers in the Department are engaging in partisan censorship.

We just talked to a source in the Information Technology Department of the Department of the Interior who denies any kind of partisan censorship.

Our source insists that all blogs are blocked, and have been blocked since the weekend of October 7-8. Also, Yahoo groups, game sites, gambling sites and cartoon sites have been blocked.

Our source confirmed that both the Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground are currently blocked, and even read us the error message that attempts to connect produced.

Apparently, “studies” showed that DOI employees were wasting a lot of time going to these web sites, and the blocking is an attempt to make them more productive.

An outside contractor handles the blocking, although our source was vague on the technical details.

Somebody who has a work related need to access a blog can petition to be allowed access.

Sure sounds like government, doesn’t it?