NASA Employee Suspended For Blogging At Work

BobJacobsen writes "FCW has an article about a NASA employee that was suspended for blogging on government time. Seems the unnamed employee's 'politically partisan' blog entries were a violation of the Hatch Act. The article ends with a chilling quote from the government's Special Counsel in the case: 'Today, modern office technology multiplies the opportunities for employees to abuse their positions and — as in this serious case — to be penalized, even removed from their job, with just a few clicks of a mouse.'" Thing is, he was soliciting campaign donations and writing partisan stuff.

Comments

fair enough

[Hatta]

Sounds fair to me. Anyone who wastes time at work posting on internet sites should really expe... shit the boss is coming.

Re:fair enough

[Joe the Lesser]

Don't worry, it's not like they'd put in a filt###*($&(*((___NO CARRIER

So...

[imyy4u3]

how do you blog with "just a few clicks of a mouse?"

Perhaps the Special Counsel should be fired for "being a total idiot."

He deserved it...

[oodaloop]

...as long as he was campaigning for the other guy.

Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, how I feel depends on what political bias the employee had.
If the employee's views agree with mine, then they are jackbooted fascist thugs for suspending him.
If I disagree with those views, then the employee has every right to deal with this inappropriate use of paid time.

Re:Eh....

[Kamineko]

What does cheese have to do with it?

Obligatory

[teslar]

As seen on bash.org:
<Ben174> : If they only realized 90% of the overtime they pay me is only cause i like staying here playing with Kazaa when the bandwidth picks up after hours.
<ChrisLMB> : If any of my employees did that they'd be fired instantly.
<Ben174> : Where u work?
<ChrisLMB> : I'm the CTO at LowerMyBills.com
*** Ben174 (BenWright@TeraPro33-41.LowerMyBills.com) Quit (Leaving)

Political autoblogging form

[DriedClexler]

Well, folks, it's happening again! The

( ) New York Times
( ) LA Times
( ) Washington Post

is reporting that the government

( ) is censoring scientists with unpleasant news.
( ) is going to cut back program _________.
( ) has been engaging in warrantless wiretapping.
( ) wants to raise taxes.
( ) plans to institute new product regulations

This is just another case of

( ) Big Government ramming itself down our throats!
( ) the War on Science!
( ) how conservatives are killing the safety net!
( ) government punishing anyone productive!
( ) how the country's becoming a totalitarian dictatorship!

HT:

( ) Digg
( ) Slashdot
( ) Technorati
( ) The other blogger who's a carbon copy of me

Re:Political autoblogging form

[mikael]

Have you seen the slashdot story generator:

Ask Slashdot: Can I Use Linux For Destroying The Ozone Layer?
Posted by brian on Wed May 28, 12:41 PM
from the have fun hitting reload page dept.
ScissorJammer asks "I just started playing around with Linux and it looks very powerful. I started thinking that this program might be perfect for my plans of destroying the ozone layer. Has any other Slashdot user tried using Linux in this way, or is the Open Source community not really into destroying the ozone layer? Either way I'd like to hear your views."

Trailer For Indiana Jones Sequel Released
Posted by brian on Wed May 28, 12:44 PM
from the have fun hitting reload page dept.
Angel writes "The new trailer for teh upcoming Indiana Jones sequel has been relaesed. This time starring Albert Einstein and Bruce Perens. Let's hope in this one that Albert Einstein can take teh bad guys and behead them with a guillotine. Go grab it before it gets Slashdotted."

New Distributed Computing Project Will Try To Help Retrieve The Amulet Of Yendor
Posted by brian on Wed May 28, 12:45 PM
from the have fun hitting reload page dept.
Distributed computing projects have been used in searching for aliens, and decapitating zombies. Now, Nvidia has announced a new program that will allow you to use your spare computing cycles in helping to help retrieve the Amulet of Yednor. Versions are available for Internet Explorer so download adn start crunching.

Pissing Around

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is really going down the crapper... wait, that's not working either.

Intentional ignorance isn't either

[dedazo]

Chances are, this guy just chose the wrong party to blog for.

No twitter, there is no "wrong party", this is the Hatch Act. Go. Read. A. Book.

The Bush administration has been "for us or against" us for a long time.

That's true, but it's hilarious coming from the top "use GNU/Everything or die" evangelist on the internets.

There's good reason the phrases "war on science" and "war on integrity" are common.

blah blah, please mod me up, I'm with groupthink

It's easy to make fun when it's not you that has to go 180 days without pay.

It's also easy to follow the laws that apply to civil servants, which I assume they were informed about when they were first hired. Wanna work for the government? Sure, just don't try to get the one you favour elected (or the other ones kicked out of office). Simple, no?

Somehow I just knew you were going to jump in here to cry censorship and trot out the Republikkan conspiracy to keep you and yours down. Don't you at least read the 150+ comments that were posted before yours to get a feel for what's happening?