The executive branch in West Virginia has created a new Web portal that does some strange things to the Web page of the judicial branch. Using some form of cross-site scripting, when the user clicks a link to the WV Supreme Court of Appeals page from this page within the portal, a navigation element (an image-map from the portal with drop-down rollovers) is inserted at the top of the court's Web site and stays there as the user browses court content. When this happens, the URL structure in the browser appears as www.wv.gov/OffSite.aspx?u=http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca The foreign navigation element makes it appear to the reader, of, say, a court opinion, that the executive branch is somehow advertising on the header of the opinion.

Quite apart from the accesibility issues created by the inserting the image-map into our site, the practice would also appear to violate separation of powers principles, as well as interfere with the impartiality and independence of the judiciary, not to mention being a questionable security practice.

So this is a plea for help to the weblog community and its smart scripters for suggestions regarding measures we can implement to prevent this navigation element (or those from other sites that may use the same approach) from interfering with the integrity of the court's Web presence.