I'd been planning to write an entry bashing Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters for her attempts to privatize our road system.
While doing some more research, I found that the Department of Transportation now has a blog, The Fast Lane. The comment policy is disturbing, to say the least.
The Fast Lane is a moderated blog, and we expect this community to treat its members with respect. All comments will be reviewed before posting, and a representative sample will be posted to the site.
In other words, their stated policy involves picking and choosing (i.e. censoring) comments by the public on a government-run website.
If I'm reading the pocket Constitution I got at NN correctly (thanks, ACLU), this is in violation of the First Amendment statement that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people to petition the government"
Such is my take, anyway, and I believe it behooves those of us in the blogosphere to get such policies addressed and rectified sooner rather than later.
For future reference, here are some other executive branch blogs that I've found (many departments still seem to lack them):
NASA has several blogs
The Department of State's blog, DipNote, links, on its blogroll, to the Council on Foreign Relations; <snark>Conspiracy!!!!!!!!!!!!! one one !!! ZOMG</snark>
The National Agricultural Library has a blog, but they claim it doesn't represent official communication.
Greenversations, the EPA blog
And of course, many members of Congress have blogs (both on their campaign sites, which aren't subject to the 1st amendment, and on their official sites, which presumably are).
While this may not seem like as big of a deal as the Bush administration's other violations of the Constitution, I think it makes sense to challenge such violations as soon as we become aware of them.
I would guess that there is a limited amount of case law available on government censorship of Internet speech. After all, it's pretty clear that before January 2007, the chairman Senate committee in charge of regulating the Internet had no idea what in the world the Internet even was-Ted Stevens was the chair before the Democrats took back the Senate, and before him, fellow illiterate Senator John McCain; I expect Senator Fritz Hollings (the Dem chairman during the two brief periods the Democrats controlled the Senate during the 107th Congress) was likely not Internet-literate, and before 1997 (when Senator McCain first became chairman), enough Americans weren't Internet literate that Senators can be given a pass.
Likewise, the Bush administration has only recently figured out how to utilize the "Internets" for communication purposes.
However, that doesn't make it any less important that we ensure that government-run blogs respect the Constitution.
Of course, given the lack of case law, it's not clear exactly what is and is not allowed on such blogs.
While I think that posting only "representative" comments is pretty clearly unconstitutional, there are other areas where constitutionality is less clear-cut.
The courts have, of course, regulated and restricted various forms of speech. Under the theory of democratic speech, the 1st amendment applies to political speech only, and the federal government may regulate and restrict, among other things, pornography, but may not restrict, for instance, speech on Daily Kos-though JeffLieber's diaries might present a bit of a conundrum.
More importantly, it's hard to think of a good non-digital analogy to posting on a government-run blog, so this is potentially opening up an entirely new area of law.
Taking a look at another cabinet member's official blog, the unimaginatively named Secretary Mike Leavitt's blog
This is a moderated blog. We expect that participants will treat each other with respect. All comments will be reviewed before posting. We will not post comments that contain vulgar language; personal attacks of any kind; or offensive terms that target specific ethnic or racial groups. We will not post comments that are spam, are clearly off topic or that promote services or products. Comments that make unsupported accusations will also not be posted.
Reporters are asked to send questions to the HHS Media Office through their normal channels and to refrain from submitting questions here as comments. Reporter questions will not be posted.
We recognize that the Web is a 24/7 medium, and your comments are welcome at any time. However, given the need to manage federal resources, moderating and posting of comments will occur during regular business hours Monday through Friday. Comments submitted after hours or on weekends will be read and posted as early as possible the next business day.
For the benefit of robust discussion, we ask that comments remain on-topic. The Secretary will blog on other topics in the future.
To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include phone numbers or email addresses in the body of your comment.
The bolded parts of the comment policy seem to be clearly troublesome, whereas the italicized parts (personal attacks, offensive terms and other trolling) might be allowed to be regulated to preserve the open forum and such.
There is also the question of whether or not a government-run blog must allow comments. I have no idea how they might rule on this, and if comment free blogs were allowed, it's possible that a challenge would backfire by causing the blog moderators to remove the ability to comment.
For instance, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' calls "Notes from the Road" a travel log and doesn't allow comments.
Finally, there is the question of whether the same policies apply to government-run blogs hosted on, say, Blogger, like DODLive is.
I'm sure you all have some thoughts on the subject, so let me (and the executive branch) hear.