I was quite annoyed to see that the US Census Bureau’s website is down during the government shutdown. Not because it costs anything extra to run the website or requires specialty staff, but because the President Obama and the civil servants that work for him, wanted to punish the public for electing leaders who disagreed with his policies, and refused to pass a budget bill until the President agreed to modify the health care law.

It is understandable that things requiring actual staff people would be closed during a government shutdown. For example, nobody expects developed recreation areas like campgrounds or even statistics collection to go on during the government shutdown. But websites? Most websites require minimal to any staffs, as computers will continue to serve up websites regardless of human interaction. There may be a marginal need for security staff to reset things should they get fouled up by hackers, but for the most part, web servers are totally automatic to run.

Taking down websites like the US Census Bureau is interfering with the free flow of information needed for the smooth progress of commence. It’s one thing to say grants and government contracts will be delayed during the shutdown, but the existing information should not be taken from the public domain for no reason at all except to punish the public.