The city of Vallejo, California—most famous for spawning robot-talking rapper E-40 and failing to solve the case of the Zodiac Killer—may not be the most nurturing place in the American marketplace of ideas. Surprise! The city filed for bankruptcy in May, and all of its employees must focus their attention, laser-like, on the task of restoring its finances to good working order. Which is why the city manager has banned them from accessing the local "rag of a newspaper's" website, or something!: Specifically, city manager Joseph Tanner added one widely-read local blog as well as the city paper to the list of sites inaccessible from city servers. Both of which like to write about how the stupid city manager has bankrupted the town, coincidentally:

"We blocked these because they are political in nature," Tanner said. "We blocked them because one is an anti-bankruptcy site and the other is a rag of a newspaper."

Now access to the paper has been restored, but city employees can't read the paper's message boards. That'll teach em. The two "join a list of pornography, social networking, gambling and hate sites that are already banned." [via Romenesko]