Kentucky state employees were prevented from accessing BluegrassReport.com today, a day after the blog's author criticized Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher in an article in the The New York Times. When Mark Nickolas, a Louisville Eccentric Observer columnist and former Democratic political consultant, wrote this morning that his blog had been blocked by the Fletcher administration, his report was picked up by political bloggers like DailyKos and Atrios. It was soon discovered that other blogs had been blocked as well and were no longer accessible to Kentucky state employees. By this afternoon, a spokesperson for Fletcher admitted that the sites had been blocked, but claimed that the action was part of the state's routine Web-monitoring plan to prevent state employees from visiting "non-business-related" Web sites during working hours.