'Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except Professor Jeffrey Hirsch of Workplace Prof Blog and Ross Runkel of both NLRB Law Memo and Ross’ Employment Law Blog. These guys were the first bloggers to catch this afternoon’s release of the NLRB’s December 16, 2007 of its decision in Register-Guard, 351 N.L.R.B. No. 70 (Dec. 16, 2007), the long-awaited decision on an employer’s right to regulate employee use of electronic systems (internet and email) for union activities. We’ll provide our own detailed analysis later, but we note that the Professor observed, as we did earlier, the very real possibility that the Board will be operationally crippled in 2008. The Professor, foreshadowing what labor will say when it returns from the holiday, said: “ at this point, I can only consider it an act of mercy upon the statute.”