For years now, Governor Ernie Fletcher's (R-KY) detractors have suspected that his administration blocked state computers' access to a well-known liberal Kentucky blog called BluegrassReport.org, a longtime foe of an administration that has become something of a TPMmuckraker All-Star.

Fletcher's people have long denied this charge, saying that they were simply blocking access to all sorts of sites, from blogs to ESPN.com, in order to stop state employees from wasting time.

But now, for the first time, the charge has been corroborated by testimony in a sworn affidavit associated with a Federal lawsuit.

National Journal reports that former state technology commissioner Michael Inman has testified in an affidavit that BluegrassReport.org was always the real target of the adminstration's blog crackdown, and the state's current chief information officer Mark Rutledge even bragged about it.

Inman says the decision was triggered after the site's extensive coverage of Fletcher's state hiring scandals not only made it a popular site, but got founder Mark Nickolas quoted in no less a source than the New York Times.

"Based on my conversations with Rutledge, it was apparent that the state had intentionally blocked BluegrassReport.org and had blocked the category of blogs and other categories of Web sites to disguise that fact," said Inman. Indeed, Inman says the filtering criteria that ultimately blocked the site was hidden carefully amongst all the other filters, to keep people from catching on.

But after the first reports came in that the blog was being blocked, while other political Web sites such as the Kentucky Republican Party were not screened out, people quickly put two and two together.

Fletcher faces voters this November, and our Election Central Poll Tracker shows him way behind Democratic challenger Steve Beshear.