Free Republic

- Did Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer steal the idea for the Huffington Post? Though Huffington has deemed the allegation "ridiculous," a judge thinks that a lawsuit making that claim is serious enough to go to trial, per a ruling in a New York court Wednesday. Peter Daou and James Boyce, two former political advisers, filed suit against the HuffPost co-founders last November claiming that they took their idea for a liberal-leaning news site. Since then, Huffington and Lerer have tried to have the case thrown out, but to no avail. The judge ruled Wednesday that the case would go...

Just before a video on "New Mars Rover Powered By Plutonium" there was a 30 second commercial for AOL. and while watching it I thought, "Gadzooks, every liberal celebrity and their dog is in this spot..." when low and behold, there was Obama, President of the United States, Command-in-Chief, self-proclaimed killer of Osama and Gaddafi, Champion of the Working Man himself shilling for AOL!

The White House just put out the list for President Obama's jobs-focused address this evening. Those who will be in the gallery with first lady Michelle Obama include: — Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric. He's chairman of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. So look for Obama to again stress the importance of technology, research and development. — Steve Case, who co-founded America Online and is, the White House says, "one of America's most accomplished entrepreneurs and philanthropists." He fills the "American can-do/entrepreneurial spirit" slot. — Darline Miller, CEO of Permac Industries, a Minnesota company that makes "precision...

Only 6 months after spending a great of its remaining cash on the purchase of Huffington Post, AOL is up for sale according to many insiders in the know. Sources in the industry claim that AOL has met privately with the mega-law firm Watchell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and investment bank Allen & Company about putting the former ISP up for sale to the highest bidder. While AOL is generating significant revenue of at least $1 Billion for the first 6 months of 2011, they are still losing a great deal of money and the purchase of HuffPost hasn’t helped...

The selling continues today on high volume. AOL bought HuffPost a few months back for $300M. I bet they regret it now.

AOL's earnings were terrible today. Many investors are blaming the Huffington Post which AOL bought for $300M a couple months ago.

Journalism is the “the first rough draft of history,” former Washington Post President and Publisher Philip Graham reportedly said. If that’s true, history won’t be very kind to conservatives. It’s not news that most of the old media – newspapers, TV and public outlets like NPR and PBS – are liberal. But old media outlets are in trouble and layoffs, closings and circulation declines run like red ink all over their balance sheets. Sensing the old models haven’t been working, the left has been pouring money into new ones. Sure they have ProPublica with its two Pulitzer

<p>Twelve reasons why the AOL – Huffington Post merger is going down in flames.</p> <p>The tragedy here is that not only will the deal ruin AOL, but it will also ruin the Huffington Post.</p> <p>It is the Peter Principle on a grand scale. None of AOL’s senior editors (Huffington, Roy Sekoff, and Nico Pitney) have ever managed more than a few people. Now they have hundreds and lack the experience to manage a team this big. Behind the scenes, long time Huffposters say that Jai Singh’s departure has eliminated the key adult in the room. Now they need to grow HuffPost and save AOL – not possible.</p>

How do you feel about Osama tourism? It's disgusting. It's great. One more thing to add to my travel list. I don't really care.

In an effort to prove that ridiculous hyperbole is not limited to Democrats in Congress, a former Huffington Post contributor has accused founder Arianna Huffington of turning bloggers into “modern day slaves� on her “plantation.� Jonathan Tasini filed a class-action lawsuit against Huffington and AOL, who bought the Huffington Post earlier this year for $315 million. Tasini wants a third of that in damages on behalf of the unpaid contributors to the site: “In my view, the Huffington Post’s bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation,” he said. “She wants to pocket the tens of...

Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage, our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America.

AFP - Bill Keller, executive editor of the venerable New York Times, and Arianna Huffington, founder of brash newcomer The Huffington Post, exchanged blows on Thursday in a highly public spat. http://www.france24.com/en/20110311-ny-times-huffington-post-exchange-barbs

That hurts. In order to integrate the Huffington Post into the AOL family, the company will be eliminating 900 jobs as they restructure the blog to try to return to revenue growth.

AOL's long-anticipated layoffs will start tomorrow, Kara Swisher reports. The company will let go between 400 and 500 employees, mostly in AOL's editorial groups. The layoffs have been anticipated since AOL's acquisition of the Huffington Post in February, and previous reports said they would begin this week.

Once the flagship of Internet services, AOL now occupies the corner booth in the Internet flea market. In an attempt to revive its fall from the stars, AOL has purchased the Huffington Post and anointed Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, president and editor-in-chief of the new and improved AOL. What's that, you say? "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Aha, but there is silver to be made by joining the "dark side" and it doesn't get any darker then the loony-left Huffington Post. "Hmm, do I smell George Soros lurking somewhere behind this?" It would...

AOL's purchase of Huffington Post is not the beginning of a liberal new media monopoly, rather it's the prolonged death rattle of a company that has money, but no reason for existing. AOL started out as the country's biggest service provider, and is now nothing more than a third rate imitation of Yahoo, which is also struggling to survive. High profile white elephant purchases by desperate dot coms are nothing new. AOL has been doing that for years. It bought Bebo for 850 million dollars and then sold it for 10 million dollars. It bought Xdrive for 30 million and...

see that Donald Trump (with how many wives and bankruptcies in his past?) appeared at the CPAC conference, hinting that he might run for President on the Republican ticket. With all due regard, I suggest he's the wrong person: We need Arianna Huffington, a woman whose fiscal wizardry and drive we will need after the almost-hero of Altgeld Gardens is voted out of office. I know, I know, many of you are saying that this is a crazy idea, that there are so many better possibilities but hear me out. This week

To grasp the Huffington Post's business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates. Whatever the ultimate impact of AOL's $315-million acquisition of the Huffington Post on the new-media landscape, it's already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.

Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna and supporter of terrorism, is employing the use of his forked tongue in an article at the Huffington Post to make the case for participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s political process. Is this Arianna Huffington’s idea of passing on family values? If so, may God help us. Tariq Ramadan has a long history of practicing Stealth Jihad, as Robert Spencer and many others have demonstrated. In 2004, when Notre Dame University gave Ramadan a professorship, the Bush Administration revoked his visa based on the law that denies visas to...

In one of her many iterations, Arianna Huffington targeted "corporate greed" as a force undermining America. That was during one of her populist phases, which frequently are followed by Huffington morphing into what she once scorned. Score another transformation for La Huff. On Sunday, AOL announced it would pay $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the left-wing website she co-founded, Huffington Post. The merger and acquisition also will place Huffington at the helm of AOL's new Huffington Post Media Group division. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced that the deal will create a "digital ecosystem" -- which may be more...

<snip> Since Feb. 1, the price of AOL shares has dropped from $23.85 to $20.89 at yesterday's close. With 106.7 million shares outstanding, that means AOL has shed $315 million in value over the last five trading days -- which happens to be exactly the same price AOL agreed to pay to acquire HuffPo. <snip>

My primary account is AOL because I like the spam filtering. Then they toss 315 million to Huffington and I realize now they are getting ad revenue for my pageviews.

Are you wondering, "will AOL's acquisition of the Huffington Post be successful?" I bet you are, as that's been a common search engine query since the announcement earlier this week that AOL will buy the Huffington Post.... Before I go on, let me stop and say a couple of more important things: Aol, Aol Acquires Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffpo.... See what I did there? That's what you call search-engine optimization, or SEO. If I worked at the Huffington Post, I'd likely be commended for the subtle way in which I inserted all those search keywords...

CNSNews.com) - The announcement early Monday morning that America Online (AOL) is buying Arianna Huffington’s liberal Web site, The Huffington Post, for $315 million -- $300 million in cash -- left at least one conservative outraged. “This proves AOL News has lost its mind,” said L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center. “They must be in such dire straits that they’ve been blinded by the millions and think an acquisition of The Huffington Post is worth sacrificing credibility and objectivity,” Bozell said. "AOL News is fooling only itself in thinking there is no journalistic conflict in merging...

First, let me congratulate Arianna Huffington on selling The Huffington Post to AOL for a reported $315 million. Isn't America a great place? Arianna came up with a great business model. Create a place where liberals could tell each other how smart they were, where they could write blog posts without being paid, and where they could create a community of commenters who routinely attacked the evil Republicans...and then sell out for mucho dinero. It always amazed me that HuffPo bloggers (not the handful of well paid staffers, but the great unwashed) thought they were so special by being allowed...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- AOL's purchase of The Huffington Post is the splashiest in a long line of acquisitions -- but the buying spree likely ends here. AOL had to part with almost half of its cash to secure the deal. As part of the $315 million acquisition, AOL unloaded $300 million in cash -- plus another $30 million in cash to cover expenses. That's more than 40% of the $802 million in cash that AOL had on hand at the end of last year.

Huffington Post agrees to $315 million buyout from AOL By Paul Farhi Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 7, 2011; 2:00 AM Huffington Post, the liberal-leaning online news site that has been one of the Internet's start-up success stories, said it agreed to a $315 million buyout late Sunday night from AOL Inc., the elder statesman of online access and digital content. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who made the announcement on her site Sunday night, will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, which will put the news outlet she co-founded under the same...

The AOL-Huffington Post merger destroys one media outlet that had plenty of conservative commentary and creates a potentially massive new liberal news portal that will reach as many as 100 million Americans a month.New York Times: The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company's largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation,...

AOL Inc has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis and lifestyle website, for $315 million, the U.S. Internet company announced on Monday. The move will create a media group that will have a combined base of 117 million visitors a month in the United States, and reach 270 million people globally, AOL said in a statement. Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, will lead a newly formed The Huffington Post Media Group, which will integrate all Huffington Post and AOL content, AOL said in a statement. Approximately $300...

AOL To Buy The Huffington Post Nathan Olivarez-Giles February 6, 2011 Arianna Huffington is selling the Huffington Post to AOL Inc. for $315 million in cash. The deal, which Huffington announced on her blog on the Huffington Post website and AOL announced in a news release, will move the co-founder of the news site to the position of president and editor in chief of a new Huffington Post Media Group division at AOL. The purchase will increase AOL's news portfolio as it competes against Yahoo's growing online news publication profile and Google's news efforts, as well as traditional media companies...

Barack Obama, US president will appear on AOL.com on Tuesday, part of the president’s get out the vote effort on election day, and a relaunch of the beleaguered website. Mr Obama pre-recorded a segment called “You’ve Got,” a one minute slot that will now air on AOL’s redesigned home page. It is part of AOL’s video-heavy approach, which it hopes will revive the fortunes of its website and lure back advertisers. EDITOR’S CHOICE AOL takes impairment charge hit - Aug-05 AOL - Jun-17 AOL reviews future of Bebo network - Apr-07 AOL taps Google executive - Feb-05 AOL starts staff...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – AOL and several private equity firms are exploring the possibility of buying Yahoo!, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The newspaper said Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group are among the firms that have expressed interest in either teaming up with AOL to buy Yahoo! or trying to take it private on their own. The Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter," said at least two or three other companies could be interested in participating if a formal buyout proposal is drawn up. The newspaper said the discussions involving private-equity firms, AOL executives and financial advisers are...

The AOL-owned site Daily Finance this morning retracted a passage in an article that falsely stated Free Republic hosted child pornography.The article was about reporter John Cook leaving Yahoo News to return to Gawker. Included in Cook's reasons for leaving, according to Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici, was that Yahoo would not allow him to write about Free Republic "hosting child pornography." The Salon.com article that was linked to support that claim actually stated that Free Republic did not host child pornography.The offending Daily Finance passage now reads:"... On similar grounds, he was prohibited from writing about the conservative website...

The Internet giant AOL libeled Free Republic as "hosting child pornography" in an article published Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at their Daily Finance news site. The site's masthead reads: Daily Finance An AOL Money & Finance Site.Authored by Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici, the article entitled Muzzled Reporter Says 'Maw of Yahoo' No Place for Journalism tells the story about John Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News and returning to his previous gig with Gawker. According to the article, Cook was the senior national affairs reporter for Yahoo's The Upshot news blog. Bercovici notes that he and Cook are...

Planned Parenthood Boycott List Now Has Pro-Abortion Firms AOL, Hilton, ING Washington, DC -- The pro-life group that has compiled the national boycott list of companies and corporations that give contributions to the Planned Parenthood abortion business today released its updated list. Several new companies joined corporations that have been longtime Planned Parenthood supporters. http://LifeNews.com/nat6623.html

Last week, Facebook announced that it had amassed 500 million users, a formable portion of the global Internet audience. But even as Mark Zuckerberg and company celebrates, others are busy trying to uproot Facebook's popularity by establishing a set of open standards to share Facebook-like features across the Internet. Just like open standards for e-mail and the Web broke users free from proprietary closed networks of the early 1990s, so too could a new set of standards allow people to share their thoughts, photos and comments across the Internet, regardless of what social networking services they use, argued Evan Prodromou,...

AOL News contributor Paul Wachter launched an inflammatory attack on Pope Benedict XVI in a Thursday post where he also defended recently-fired CNN editor Octavia Nasr for her eulogy of Hezbollah's spiritual leader. After hinting that the network "overreacted," Wachter suggested that CNN should also fire "anyone who speaks highly of the pope, who...has contributed to the deaths of millions from AIDS." Wachter began his commentary, "Octavia Nasr Firing: Should CNN Also Ax Anyone Who Praises the Pope?," by recounting the former Middle Eastern affairs editor's Tweet...He then echoed Nasr's own synopsis of the Hezbollah spiritual leader: "Fadlallah left a...

"Some UFOs are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft, and this is the biggest story of the millennium." These words are not the rantings of a deranged individual looking for attention or a comfortable straitjacket. Stanton Friedman is a maverick of sorts. Employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist for companies like General Electric, General Motors, Westinghouse and Aerojet General Nucleonics, he worked on highly classified programs involving nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets. In 1958, UFOs caught his attention, and Friedman has since lectured about this subject at more than 700 colleges and professional groups in all 50 states and...

The struggling Internet company AOL was laying off up to 1,200 workers this week because it didn't get enough volunteers to accept buyouts. AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said Monday that only 1,100 had volunteered to leave. That means AOL would need to shed up to 1,200 positions to reach its previously announced reduction target of up to 2,300, or about a third of its work force. The cuts, which were on top of thousands of positions shed in recent years, came as AOL separated from Time Warner Inc. last month. AOL acquired Time Warner at the height of the dot-com...

NEW YORK – AOL resumed life as an independent Internet company Thursday as it completed its spinoff from Time Warner Inc. and closed the book on one of the most disastrous business combinations in history. AOL shares fell 47 cents, or 2 percent, to $23.20 in afternoon trading. Today's AOL is much different from the company once known as America Online, which got big in the 1990s by selling dial-up Internet access and then used $147 billion of its inflated stock to buy Time Warner. AOL, which is now worth about $2 billion, is trying to get most of its...

AOL and Time Warner have finally called it quits. James Quinn looks at the souring of the dotcom match that appeared to have been made in mergers and acquisitions heaven It was an auspicious occasion, the business titans of the West standing shoulder to shoulder at the dawn of a new century. On the stage of the Shanghai International Convention Centre, in late September 1999, the crème de la crème of business achievement smiled at the hundreds of delegates, both Chinese and from around the world, who had gathered for the Fortune Global Forum. From AIG's Hank Greenberg to Viacom's...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- AOL may lay off a third of its staff as part of a restructuring related to the company's upcoming spin-off from Time Warner Inc., the unit told regulators Thursday. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, AOL said it had informed employees of the layoffs, which are conditioned upon its successful spin-off from Time Warner (TWX 31.86, -0.96, -2.93%) . The transaction is slated for Dec. 9. AOL told employees it has announced a voluntary layoff program that starts Dec. 4 and goes through Dec. 11. The company is offering buyouts to as many as...

What do you think of President Obama's job performance? Approve Disapprove And: Did you vote for Pres__ent Obama?

In general, how does this country handle illegal immigrants? Too harshly Too leniently About right

What do you think of Carville's remarks about Beck? Thumbs up Thumbs down (called Beck nuts)

Just four months after she announced her book deal, there's a title and new release date for Sarah Palin's memoir. The 400-page book is called 'Going Rogue: An American Life.' Working with author Lynn Vincent, the former GOP vice presidential nominee turned in the manuscript ahead of schedule and publication is being moved up from spring to Nov. 17 -- in plenty of time for holiday shopping.

A Jones County inventor has filed a lawsuit against two Internet server companies. John Ishmel Henry of Soso, in May, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. In his suit, Henry claims that “he was called and depicted as a n----r on two of the Internet service provider search engines, AOL and Google.” Henry, the original inventor of the vibrating toilet seat, was featured on the Jay Leno Show in November, 2008. “Needless to say that my invention garnered a lot of attention,” he said. “I was completely humiliated and horrified...

Has anyone noticed when they sign on to AOL, social networks or surf the net, there are banner ads touting "Obama wants to send you to college" or "Obama wants to lower your insurance". What is going on? It disturbs me that any politician would be elevated this way--especially when it puts him in the company of celebrity leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro and Chavez who were/are beloved leaders who promised to improve life for the believers at other people's expense. This isn't Obama paying for college or insurance, it's the taxpayers! It should be advertised as such: "Do...

Do you approve or disapprove of Obama's handling of health care? Strongly approve Somewhat approve Somewhat disapprove Strongly disapprove AND Do you approve or disapprove of Obama's overall handling of his job as president? Strongly approve Somewhat approve Somewhat disapprove Strongly disapprove

How would you rate Obama's job performance so far? Excellent Good Fair Poor AND Has your opinion of him changed over the past few months? Yes, it's improved Yes, it's worsened No