Rick Perry spreads his wings of Freedom at CPAC 2011 (Credit: rickperry.org)

Mediabistro:

Try following @GovernorPerry right now, and we’re sure you won’t have a problem. Unless, that is, you are part of a group of Texas journalists. According to DallasNews.com, several members of the Texas media have been blocked from following Governor Perry’s Twitter account.

According to Burnt Orange Report, Perry's been blocking progressive bloggers since last year, but he's apparently now going after staff writers at newspapers as well.

According to a Dallas Morning News reporter-blogger, the governor blocked the paper’s staff writer from following the state's First Tweeter. Seems a bit odd when you consider more than 35,000 people follow Perry on Twitter, other DMN staffers included, and he follows about 32,000 Twitter accounts. How would Perry feel if someone blocked him? Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, according to the report, received the same Twitter cold shoulder from Perry, while my own boss-man here at NBCDFW follows merrily along. "Guess I'm not big-time enough or an annoyance to the governor," boss-man wrote in an e-mail message.

I guess if you're a freedom-lover like Rick Perry, nothing says more about how much you really love freedom than blocking somebody on Twitter. I mean, how could anybody expect the open marketplace of ideas to function efficiently unless you stamp out all the bad ideas. And the best part of it is that if anybody ever complains about, well hey, they're probably already blocked so you don't have to listen to them whine about it. And if they aren't already blocked, you just add another to the list. It's perfection, right up there with freedom fries.