Yesterday, in the rush of events, we linked to an AP piece reporting that charges against Gov. Ernie Fletcher had been "dismissed."

What was missing there was that the charges were dismissed because Fletcher pled guilty. As part of a deal struck with the state's attorney general, Fletcher admitted wrongdoing (although not "criminal wrongdoing"), several of his appointees will be forced to resign, and all charges were dropped.

The New York Times has a good rundown of the agreement.

Kentucky's Attorney General has been pursuing an investigation of Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) since last year; in May, he finally won an indictment charging political favoritism in Fletcher's administration. Today, he got bad news. From the AP:

A judge on Thursday dismissed charges against Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher that had accused him of breaking state law by basing personnel decisions on political considerations.

A lawyer for the Republican governor had been negotiating a settlement to the misdemeanor charges for the past two days, Democratic state Attorney General Greg Stumbo said Thursday.

The special judge assigned to the case, David E. Melcher, dismissed the charges Thursday with prejudice, meaning they can't be brought again.

More, as always, at the BluegrassReport.

When is a reporter not a reporter?

The answer: when he/she writes for a blog, according to Kentucky officials.

Back in June, Kentucky's administration abruptly banned state employees from reading blogs. They claimed that it wasn't censorship -- but the proprietor of the blog BluegrassReport.org, Mark Nickolas, sued (pdf) in July, claiming that the government censored Nickolas and other blogs because they were critical of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's (R) administration.

A recent motion (pdf) by Nickolas discloses emails between Kentucky administration officials showing what is an apparently very low opinion of blogs. In deciding whether to reply to one reporter's query, one official wrote to another, "John prefers that I not to respond to bloggers since they not reports (sic)." When another official figured out that whoever was calling was actually from a publication of the National Journal Group, and thus deemed worthy of their response, the other responded, "I'll call him then."

A TPMm reader has a bright idea. The administration in Kentucky claims that the internet filtering software the state uses is responsible for identifying what falls into the category of "blogs." The name of the software is Webwasher. Is Webwasher really responsible for the disparity between which blogs make the list and which don't? I have a call into the Secure Computing people about this, but I may not get an answer.

But a TPMm reader writes in to ask whether our beloved readers might be able to answer the question:

...I bet one of your thousands of technically-savvy users works in an office that uses Webwasher, and has access to the software. Why not post an appeal for information? The key questions:

1) Is there an accessible default list of blogs? Are the blogs blocked/allowed in Kentucky on/off it?

2) When the 'block blogs' option is enabled, can users access the liberal blogs that we know to be banned in Kentucky? The conservative blogs we know are getting through?

So? Any Webwasher users out there?

During my conversation with the guy from Kentucky's state tech office, he mentioned that the state of Indiana had just implemented their own filtering technology up there.

Hmm. So have they chosen to block state employees from viewing blogs? I called up Mark Cotterill, General Counsel of Indiana's Office of Technology.

No. "I don't see us going there." Why? "We treat our state employees as professionals."

So what have they chosen to block? Two categories: general pornography and child pornography.

"Our process is just different," he said. Yep.

So how does the Kentucky administration justify blocking some blogs and not others?

I just spoke again with Mark Routledge, the Deputy Commissioner at the state's Office of Technology. He again emphasized that his office had "no agenda, no target."

When I asked about how one (conservative) blog was able to get off the blocked list, after a long pause, he said he didn't know. But there is a process for how that could happen.

"It's a decision up to independent agencies," he said. Those in management could lift the ban if someone requested it, saying that the site "had business use."

"The Commonwealth Office of Technology provides technology," he said, "it's not our practice to decide what is appropriate content, because [different agencies in the government] have... different needs."

Keep in mind that this is a government that's been rocked by a scandal of political favoratism in hiring. So one wonders how unbiased that appeal process would be.

Update: Following the New York Times, the AP has picked up the story.

The great Kentucky blog ban gets stickier.

As I reported Wednesday, the Kentucky Commonwealth Office of Technology justified their decision to block state employees from reading blogs by saying that they'd decided to block the entire category. All blogs. This despite the fact that there seemed to be selectivity in who was blocked and who wasn't.

Well, this seals it.

A conservative blogger got a personal assurance yesterday that state employees would no longer be blocked from reading his blog.

And yet the block goes on for other blogs. It'll be interesting to hear what innovative criteria the administration will use as justification for this decision.

Finally, we have a response from the Fletcher administration on their blog ban.

Mark Routledge, Deputy Commissioner of the state's Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT), which manages internet service for the state government, told me that the state had not targeted specific sites. Rather, they'd made a decision to block state employees from viewing the entire category of blogs.

The decision was originally instituted yesterday evening at 5 PM, Routledge said, and they made "an adjustment" at 7 AM. No adjustments had been made since then, he said -- contrary to the experience of some readers of TPMm and the Bluegrass Report who wrote in as sites were blocked throughout the morning. "We're not sitting here, seeing where people are going and blacklisting specific sites," Routledge said.

And Routledge wanted to spare me any hurt feelings. "We didn't want you to think that you were being singled out," he said, explaining his decision to call me back. The same went for the Bluegrass Report, which he referred to as "Bluegrass something or other."

The state employees' union isn't the only outfit decrying the Kentucky state government's ban on a handful of blogs, most of which appear to be critical of the state's governor, Ernie Fletcher.

Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY), whose district includes the state capitol, has just come out firmly against the policy. "I believe the recent action of the Fletcher administration to block access to a handpicked number of blogs is a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution," Chandler said through a spokeswoman. "This flies in the face of a fundamental right of free speech."

You heard it here first, folks! (Unless you work for the state of Kentucky.)

I just called the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents over 13,000 Kentucky state employees, and asked what they thought of the Great Kentucky Blog Ban.

"This attempt by the governor to sweep under the rug his gross ethical violations is shameless," spokeswoman Jodi Sakol told me, referring to the numerous transgressions by the state's GOP governor, Ernie Fletcher. "If he thinks that by trying to cover up what he's done it's going to go away, he's wrong."

Sakol said AFSCME, which is the largest state employees' union in Kentucky, "calls on the governor to lift his ban on workers having access to the free press."

The Bluegrass Report's Mark Nickolas writes in to say that the mothership, TPM, has finally made the list. And Atrios too.

OK, now it's personal.

Since we've posted on the Kentucky administration's move to block state employees from viewing meddlesome, muckraking websites, TPMmuckraker has apparently made the list too (really, it was just a matter of time).

A TPMm reader and Kentucky state employee writes in to say that the state's Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) has blocked TPMm - but not the mothership yet.

After posting, I called the state's tech office and spoke to COT Assistant Director Jim Lydon there, who claimed not to know anything about the blocking. They said they block "a lot of inappropriate business sites," such as gambling or shopping sites, but that he didn't know anything about blocking political sites. But he said he'd get back to me.

Since then, it appears the office has got wind that this is a bigger deal. I called him again when I learned we'd been blocked and was referred to the press rep of the state's Secretary of Finance. I left a message there.

The Governor's office still won't return our calls.

Jeez. Just last week, muckraking blogger Roy Temple was carted out of the Missouri governor's office when he tried to attend a bill signing.

Now in neighboring Kentucky, state employees arrived at work this morning to discover their computers were blocked from viewing the muckraking blog Bluergassreport.org. The site has doggedly pursued the administration of Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who's at the center of one of the largest scandals in the state's history.

The admin's tech office is responsible for the deed, which seems ham-handedly political -- Wonkette has also been blocked, though other blogs have not. The blog has been hitting Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R-KY) for months and months over his administration's illegal cronyism. You can see the long list of scandal casualties here on our Kentucky Grand Ole Docket -- 15 indictments, nine of which Fletcher pardoned.

We'll be calling the governor's office to see why state employees need to be protected from the Bluegrass Report.