Capitol Bloggers Anonymous

State Assembly Representative Mark Pocan (D) laments a perceived cracking down on anonymous blogs seemingly originating from the State Capitol. While a number of bloggers are trying to rescue "Dennis York", other anonymous bloggers are catching some heat:

Word has it that the Capitol Curmudgeon blog was shut down perhaps by the GOP legislative majority after a frustration from members about critical observations of them from blogs. See the December Xoff Files blog. There were no posts for a short time, but it came back with more posts.

This week, however, it shut down for what looks like good. The link is dead. The last article was on Wednesday, January 11. Then the blog was taken down.

What's occured this week that could have been related to this? Well the GOP Assembly caucus met this week. And now the blog is down. This is the same GOP caucus who wanted to punish another blogger for their posts about a late night session.

Now, the moderate and always interesting Playground Politics blog hasn’t posted since Wednesday? Coincidence or free speech casualty?

Please say it ain’t so…..

Pocan sees it as First Amendment issue (nice to see one Democrat stand up for the First Amendment lately). On the flip side, I wonder how much of this was done on the taxpayer's time, and if that would bother any of the bloggers' defenders. I think there is an obligation for staff to defend the honor and not act contrary to the interests of the legislators they work for. On the other hand, I think if a few people in Madison took their reputations seriously they would be correcting their own behavior rather than cracking down on those who tell about it to the constituents. Since the legislators insist on behaving the way they do, the anonymous bloggers in the capitol are performing a public service.