I'm missing something here. Why does Google have an internal list for political discussions and stuff? Are Google employees allowed to post their stuff on the

I'm missing something here. Why does Google have an internal list for political discussions and stuff? Are Google employees allowed to post their stuff on their publicly viewable personal blogs, HN, etc., while at Google? What happens if someone posts a link on the Google internal lists to their publicly viewable blog entry and requests publicly viewable comments on it? Would they get in trouble?