In most countries, the "Interior Ministry" is usually the state security branch -- the secret police, and whatnot. But as George Carlin once so famously pointed out, here in the United States the Deparment of the Interior is in charge of everything that's outside -- the wilderness, the parks, and whatnot.

But apparently some of our Department of the Interior are jealous of their foreign colleagues, who apparently taunt them at international Interior gatherings. ("Hey, Joe, how many subversive trees did you round up last week?") So they have started to play with similar responsibilities, and are starting to block certain conservative blogs.

According to the most recent reports from Baron Bodissey, the blogs discovered to be blocked thus far are:

Captain's Quarters Cox and Forkum Gates of Vienna Little Green Footballs Michael J. Totten Michelle Malkin Power Line Protein Wisdom Rantings of a Sandmonkey Roger L. Simon The Adventures of Chester The American Thinker The Belmont Club The Doctor is In Wizbang

(Emphasis added, of course)

The Baron's source says that he has yet to find a single liberal blog that is blocked.

I fully expect that this situation will not stand. Now that the double standard has been exposed, the blocks will all be lifted or (more likely) the liberal blogs will get added to the list.

But in the meantime, I think I will revel in the prestigious company we here at Wizbang find ourselves in. August personages indeed.

Kevin adds:

It turns out there was a reason for the clampdown that had nothing to do with blogs. The DOI Inspector General released a report on Internet use within the agency and the results weren't pretty...

WASHINGTON (MSNBC) - Interior Department employees aren't just using their computers to oversee parks and wildlife, an investigation found. They're spending thousands of hours a week visiting shopping, sex and gambling Web sites.

A report made public Wednesday on an internal investigation examining a week of computer use found more than more than 1 million log entries in which 7,700 employees visited game and auction sites.

More than 4,700 log entries were to sexually explicit and gambling Web sites.

The findings are "egregious" and "alarming," the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in the report [PDF].

"Computer users at the department have continued to access sexually explicit and gambling Web sites due to the lack of consistency in department controls over Internet use," he wrote.

Clearly there are IT issues at Interior, and blogs (mostly conservative ones) have been unfairly lumped in with the porn and gambling sites.

Bonus: Among the vast number of interesting tidbits is this:

"The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was not included in our review because of the Cobell Court's injunction against Internet use by BIA."

It turns out that BIA has been offline since 2001 because Interior could not secure the network.

Jay Tea adds: Thanks, Kevin, for killing my gosh-darn fun conspiracy theory. Stupid facts...