While you're free to have a blog, your employer is free to fire you for it?

While you're free to have a blog, your employer is free to fire you for it. That fits under the same umbrella as some other seemingly unrelated situations like the Dixie Chicks' predicament: you are free to say what you want, but you are not immune from the consequences.

The Chicago Sun Times is reporting...

Blogged right out of a job

NEW YORK -- Flight attendant Ellen Simonetti and former Google employee Mark Jen have more in common than their love of blogging: They both got fired over it.

Simonetti had posted suggestive photographs of herself in uniform, while Jen speculated online about his employer's finances. In neither case were their bosses happy when they found out.

Though many companies have Internet guidelines that prohibit visiting porn sites or forwarding racist jokes, few of the policies cover blogs, or Web journals, particularly those written outside of work hours.

''There needs to be a dialogue going on between employers and employees,'' said Heather Armstrong, a Web designer fired for commenting on her blog about goings on at work. ''There's this power of personal publishing, and there needs to be rules about what you can or cannot say about the workplace.''