Gates of Vienna broke this story after a reader emailed them a tip. The D.O.I. has done what most businesses do when their workers spend too much time on the Internet: block access to certain sites. Some of the most of the popular pro-American blogs are on the banned list while neo-Stalinist anti-American blogs like Atrios were at the time of the writing of the original post still accessible to D.O.I. network users. Readers need not be told what happened when the story began circulating on the Right side of the web.

It is unlikely that the Department of the Interior harbors widespread anti-American sympathies, or is staffed entirely by radical leftists. I believe it is more likely that whoever was in charge of blocking network access to outside blogs was playing politics, allowing radical sites to remain available as some sort of statement. It’s possible that this person or persons wanted to scare up some controversy and make it seem, at least temporarily, that the D.O.I. was endorsing radical politics. Whether this was to whip conservative bloggers into a frenzy and make them look silly, or simply to embarrass a hated supervisor no one seems to know, nor does it matter.

I’m confident that the Leftist blogs will soon be added to the banned list, and some angry I.T. professional will be “underemployed” within the week.