Besieged Kentucky Governor Draws Fire From a New Quarter

[Judi Lynn]

Besieged Kentucky Governor Draws Fire From a New Quarter


By IAN URBINA
Published: June 23, 2006

As if there were not already enough problems for Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, who has been indicted in a political patronage case, he now has political bloggers and First Amendment lawyers after him too.

The watchdog group Public Citizen said yesterday that it might sue Mr. Fletcher, a first-term Republican, on free-speech grounds for blocking state employees' access to certain political blogs.

The ban was instituted Wednesday, a day after an article in The New York Times quoted Mark Nickolas, a Democratic blogger, as saying the governor's administration was "peddling ludicrous conspiracy theories." BluegrassReport.org, Mr. Nickolas's site, was one of the first to be blocked, but others frequently critical of Republicans were added soon thereafter.
(snip)

In the last year, Mr. Fletcher, the state's first Republican governor in more than three decades, has been indicted in the patronage case along with 14 others in his administration and has lost a highly publicized effort to oust the chairman of the Kentucky Republican Party. He also recently fired his fifth press secretary.

His administration's ban on some blogs has brought a flurry of postings at The Daily Kos, Boing Boing and TPMmuckraker, three of the most heavily used blogs on the Internet. Many of those postings denounced the move as unconstitutional censorship
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/us/23kentucky.html?_r=1&oref=slogin



Gov. Ernie Fletcher and friend

[Roland99]

1. Check out post #2 here (Fletcher engaging in selective blocking)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=154&topic_id=1244&mesg_id=1244

[Stevepol]

2. He probably got elected in the first place by Diebold or ES&S.