Actually, there are differences these days. There's a category meant for Free Republic editorial and news work, called FreeperEd in the tags portion of a new post.
It's meant for decent quality editorial work. We are all hoping that FR can eventually become a source of original content in news reporting and/or editorial work that will match such places as Red State or Fox News or any of the myriad of other sites.
It's an initiative, hopefully to quality. Vanities will still be out there, but hopefully only good work will stay in FreeperEd.
Material lacking in quality will be moved to a different category.. "SpecialEd".
Good point. And your piece (as always) is well-written.