blondish.net

A Blogger’s Right?

I recently faced being told at work because of my previous blog that I was over-the-line. What happened is “someone” brought the information into the workplace and started to gossip about it. I never said anything about my blog to these people, especially about the previous posting. I even got in trouble. What gets me is one: my blogging is not at work, on duty, nor is libelous. I am within my First Amendment Rights to say what I did and to get in trouble for my blog was unreal.

I do not force people to come to my blog, not even on my MySpace page.

Take in for instance, if I said the same thing in the previous blog at a bar with friends and someone overhead it. Then, they brought that to work, then they should get in trouble, right? They are the ones bringing non-work topics that are inappropriate to work. It would not matter what is said at all.

Now, if I had said this at work, which I did not, then that would be a different story. After a bit of talking with my folks and some offtime hours with the family lawyer, I decided to check out ACLU which is the American Civil Liberties Union. From there, based on what I found, I went to the Illinois Department of Human Rights as this is a issue more suited to this area. I found a few things on rights, but not exactly about blogging, so I did more digging. I came upon EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation which has an indepth section about bloggers. Of course, I do not blog anonymously and never have, nor ever will. Under the section in “Blogging Without Getting Fired”, I believe number 5 suits some of my rights on How to Blog Safely. Furthermore, in their section of The Bloggers’ FAQ on Online Defamation Law under the question “What are some examples of libelous and non-libelous statements?” and the three FAQs after pretty much have made me a happy camper. None of what I blogged in the previous post were false, and my emphasized vernacular was merely opinion and the story behind it was not fallacious.

I have written the numbers to the three different offices as I am not sure which Mount Vernon falls over and will be calling them. When I was confronted at work, I informed them that I would possibly seek a lawyer, but I think IDHR might be able to handle the situation.

I know the post is a bit jumbled, but after spending 2 hours after 3AM, I am exhausted.

Tags: drama, job, myspace, rights

Short blog…

I did a few upgrades and plug-ins to the Wordpress, but I did have a few more to do. I have been mostly business writing a proposal for the AAPA VeteransCaucus site that I have been working on for the past year.

I have to make this blog short as we are currently in a severe thunderstorm warning in my county. It looks terrible from the west.

I will have 20 new MySpace layouts ready, so please swing by the visitor section to check them out.

Luis is taking my son, Angel to Mexico by the end of the week. They will be gone to see his side of the family for about two weeks. Luis was very nice to allow him to stay this weekend. Since the pool in my apartment complex was opened, I took Angel to go swimming. I am just happy to have him over.

Tags: angel flores, blog, job, myspace, weather, web design