Sherry Chandler

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Well, Governor Ernie Fletcher has made the NYTimes again, but I doubt if he’s happy about it.

Seems the Fletcher administration decided to inaugurate summer on June 21 by blocking state employees’ access to some web sites, to include porn and hate sites, computer games, shopping sites, and “certain political blogs.”

The problem is that the blocking was selective. State employees can still look at Republican-friendly sites like the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. It’s only mostly sites that criticize Fletcher that are now off limits. Chief among these apparently is Bluegrass Reports. The blog owner, Mark Nikolas, was campaign manager for U.S. Representative Ben Chandler when Chandler ran against Fletcher for governor. Nikolas is a proudly partisan Democrat and his site has been scathingly critical of Fletcher.

Nikolas soon mobilized the big Democratic players in the blogosphere: Talking Points Memo and its companion TPM Muckraker, The Daily Kos, Eschaton. Then some of those sites got blocked, too. And now the national mainstream media are catching on.

And instead of losing readership (Nikolas says about 10% of his daily hit count comes from state computers), traffic at Bluegrass Reports has increased tremendously. As Nikolas reported on June 22:

Yesterday’s visits were a record. 15,904 visitors, 31,313 page views. Today is starting off quite strong as well with tons of national traffic.

This kind of political blundering has been typical of the Fletcher administration, which is why Fletcher is now the third most unpopular governor in the country.

I have no quarrel with the state government asking, even requiring, employees to stay off the web for anything that isn’t work related. But I tend to agree with Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write about nannyware:

I think that all nannyware is a bad idea because it abdicates responsibility. If you’re a parent, put the computer in a common space where anyone walking by can easily see what’s on the screen. If you’re a business, simply tell employees that theft of company time and resources will not be tolerated and that web surfing not directly related to work is theft. Fire one or two employees for stealing and the others will get the idea.

These programs are notoriously unreliable.

And this kind of selective blocking is kicking in the law of unintended consequences for Ernie Fletcher.

More here and here. And from the horse’s mouth.

An Old Cat’s Dying Soliloquy

Long years beheld me Patton’s mansion grace,
The gentlest, fondest of the feline race;
Before her frisking thro’ the garden glade,
Or at her feet, in quiet slumber, laid;
Prais’d for my glossy back, of tortoise streak,
And the warm smoothness of my snowy neck;
Soft paws, that sheath’d for her the clawing nail;
The shining whisker, and meand’ring tail.
Now feeble age each glazing eye-ball dims,
And pain has stiffen’d these once supple limbs;
Fate of eight lives the forfeit gasp obtains,
And e’en the ninth creeps languid thro’ my veins.

Much, sure, of good the future has in store,
When Lucy basks on Patton’s hearth no more,
In those blest climes where fishes oft forsake
The winding river and the glassy lake;
There as our silent-footed race behold
The spots of crimson and the fins of gold,
Venturing beyond the shielding waves to stray,
They gasp on shelving banks, our easy prey;
While birds unwing’d hop careless o’er the ground,
And the plump mouse incessant trots around,
Near wells of cream, which mortals never skim,
Warm marum creeping round their shallow brim;
Where green valerian tufts, luxuriant spread,
Cleanse the sleek hide, and form the fragrant bed.

Yet, stern dispenser of the final blow,
Before thou lay’st an aged Grimalkin low,
Bend to her last request a gracious ear,
Some days, some few short days to linger here!
So, to the guardian of her earthly weal
Shall softest purs these tender truths reveal:
Ne’er shall thy now expiring Puss forget
To thy kind cares her long-enduring debt;
Nor shall the joys that painless realms decree,
Efface the comforts once bestow’d by thee;

To countless mice thy chicken bones preferr’d,
Thy toast to golden fish and wingless bird:
O’er marum border and valerian bed
Thy Lucy shall decline her moping head;
Sigh that she climbs no more, with grateful glee,
Thy downy sofa and thy cradling knee;
Nay, e’en by wells of cream shall sullen swear,
Since Patton, her lov’d mistress, is not there.

— Anna Seward (1792)