Free Republic

Newsweek blogger Ben Adler thinks the national media are giving the Tea Parties gentle treatment. "Unfortunately," Adler wrote in a June 21 post, "what appear to be false notions of objectivity - or perhaps a lack of interest in policy - is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered." Adler complained that a recent Associated Press article, "Enraged to Engaged: Tea partiers explain why," failed to examine the ideology of the demonstrators in the grassroots conservative movement. "The piece examines how and why a variety of individuals became involved in...

After profiling the different types of blog commenters recently, I had some requests for advice on how to be the good kinds of commenters, rather than the bad.  Here are some dos and don’ts that might help: 1) Be charitable. If you are not making a comment out of love, you have no reason to make it. 2) Do not comment when you’re angry. You’ll probably regret it and won’t be able to undo it.  Anything good to say will still be good in a few hours when the anger has worn off a bit. 3) If you quote part...

Note: The following text is a quote: Former FBI Contract Linguist Sentenced for Leaking Classified Information to Blogger WASHINGTON—U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams sentenced former FBI contract linguist, Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, aka Samuel Shamai Leibowitz, age 40, of Silver Spring, Md., today to 20 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for unlawfully providing classified documents to the host of an Internet blog who then published information from those documents on the blog. The sentence was announced by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Rod J. Rosenstein, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland; and...

The same sloppy legislative writing that created so many unintended consequences in ObamaCare also plagues the DISCLOSE Act, the effort in Congress to tighten spending rules in the wake of the Citizens United decision — and that’s the generous take on the situation. Reason’s Bradley Smith and Jeff Patch warn that the perhaps-unintended consequences of legislative language will allow the FEC to regulate political speech online. The fact that media entities like the New York Times have specific exemptions built into the bill makes the intent, or lack thereof, rather murky: Last week, a congressional hearing exposed an effort to...

The idea of a government "Department of Information" is not new. After all, the Nazis had one. So did the Soviets. All good little dictatorships need one in order to get the "facts" out to the people. HuffPo blogger - brain dead psychologist Jim Taylor - originally came up with the idea as a serious measure to get the "facts" out to the people. And like any enthusiastic authoritarian, he wants the government to determine what the "facts" are: Here is my proposal to return fact-based reality to our national dialogue (note: please don't miss my ironic tone):The federal government...

Abu Talhah al-Amrikee, avowed South Park critic, American hardline jihadi-Salafi, who admins The Mujahid Blog, contributes to RevolutionMuslim.com and a reader/interlocutor of this blog recently published a piece to his website entitled, “Fomenting Disunity in the Counterterrorism Movement.” I can appreciate the overall thrust of Abu Talhah’s approach (seeking to divide and conquer) as it’s one that I’ve embraced in my own writings and thinking about how degrade al-Qaida movements. The approach was actually the conceptual backbone of the “Stealing AQ’s Playbook,” article that I co-authored in 2006, which has been cited now several times by Ayman al-Zawahiri specifically because...

SNIPPET: "He now likes to be called Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, and his primary interest in this world appears to be Islamic radicalism. Last week, Chesser, 20, posted a warning on the website RevolutionMuslim.com following the 200th episode of "South Park," which included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit." SNIPPET: "In a separate post on RevolutionMuslim.blogspot.com, which now serves as the group's main website since RevolutionMuslim.com has been shuttered, Chesser quoted Usama bin Laden when referencing why reactions are required when anyone insults or belittles the Prophet Muhammad. "As Usama bin Laden said with regard to...

Two Azerbaijani bloggers, jailed after posting a satirical anti-Government video on YouTube, have failed in their latest bid for freedom. Adnan Hajizade, 26, and Emin Milli, 30, last year were found guilty of 'hooliganism' and jailed for two and two-and-a-half years, respectively. Authorities say the charges have nothing to do with the video, in which a man dressed in a donkey costume, representing the government, holds a press conference with an adoring press.

LITTLE Tea Party Groups have a BIG need for a web presence for thier local members. We bloggers put up a post or two a day and think nothing of the technology. If you web template allows it, a simple "post" can be a web page for these folks and really give them a boost. And if you don't have a Tea Party group in your back yard, since we have no space/time continuum problems with the Internet, you could be in Iceland and help a "local" group in Spokane. It takes very little time for folks like us .....

Introducing the Obama Care Card. Brought to you by the same people that brought you ponzi schemes such as: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Cash for Clunkers, and the Recovery Act. This card gives you the right to other peoples’ time and money. The new federal government health insurance program will create choice and competition for all Americans. By that we mean that all Americans will only have one choice of health insurance providers, and all Americans will be in competition with each other to see a doctor! You get all this at the low low cost of only $2 trillion...

Update: Hempton's blog is now back. Original post: On January 2nd, financial blogger extaordinaire John Hempton published a long post with the inflammatory title: "A dark privatised social security story: Astarra, the missing money and how examining a fund manager owned by Joe Biden’s family led to substantial regulatory action in Australia." I can read it right now in my Google reader, but if you want check it out, you're out of luck. Suddenly Hempton's blog -- which uses Google's blog platform Blogger -- is labeled as spam and unavailable. The discovery was made by Felix Salmon, who suspects that...

Which is why the self justifying manifesto of the Rochester egg man who went to a Borders Palin book signing event hoping to throw an egg at Sarah Palin is a document of considerable significance because, as we push beyond the usual adolescent pseudo-revolutionary posturing we can observe an uglier truth about the mindset of this weird gremlin, who Lenin would have filed as a “useful idiot”, and his more sinister dancing masters, the Chris Matthews, Geoffrey Dunns and Andrew Sullivans whose steady drumbeat of lies and crude, misogynistic vitriol has the sole purpose of dehumanizing Sarah Palin and, by...

There’s an irony surrounding the academic discipline of anthropology, at least in its contemporary form: it’s a subject devoted to the study of man, yet it is profoundly misanthropic. In recent years, anthropologists (and sociologists) have learned to caricature every human impulse (even – or rather, especially – the benevolent and charitable) as imperialist, paternalist, or worse. Efforts to curtail female genital mutilation, for example, are cast as colonialist, as is Doctors Without Borders, an organization that has done much to improve the lives of the downtrodden. It has been instructive, therefore, to observe the Academic Left’s response to President...

While covering the St. Louis Tea Party at Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis Saturday afternoon, I ran into a fellow blogger. Not your ordinary blogger, this guy is 12 years old and, perhaps, the youngest conservative blogger in Missouri. His name: David Bader.

For the last 25 years, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has aided in the search for missing children. In conjunction with all levels of law enforcement, children's organizations and John Walsh's America's Most Wanted, 492 (at last report) children have been recovered. Through the daunting tasks involved in these cases, searchers, law enforcement, and the observant citizens, work tirelessly to either bring home the missing, or provide closure.

The case of Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter vs. Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI) has reached the New Hampshire Supreme Court. MSI has demanded Implode-O-Meter reveal the identity of one of its sources in a defamation case and Implode-O-Meter refuses. Please consider New Hampshire Suit Challenges Mortgage Blogger's Use of Anonymous Sources The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news. The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in 2007 that publishes stories about the meltdown of the mortgage industry. The...

The total cost of state regulations on businesses is $493 billion and 3.8 million jobs according to the first-of-its kind study.business-regulation-3 That’s an average of $134,122 per California business, $13,801 per household and $4,685 per resident each year. The California report is significant, according to the Governor’s Office of Small Business Advocate, because small businesses are 98% of the state’s enterprises and provide 52% of the jobs.

Your going to see things move very quickly now for I AM aT the fronT of this battle against darkness and the taking back of my land . Be prepared to war against the enemy as never before and remember the armor of Jericho for the walls of the enemies encampments Shall go down in great tumult amidst your war cries and the blast of the trumpet for you are my shofars of delight . Now do my bidding and assault the fortresses of kerioth and lance all her rulers that " Lie " within her by the filling of...

PITTSBURGH — Call this city blogger central. Two grassroots groups — one left leaning, the other right leaning — are holding their annual conferences here and teaching members how to wield clout online.

KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian riot police fired tear gas and water cannons in clashes with several thousand antigovernment demonstrators who gathered in Kuala Lumpur Saturday to protest a long-standing law allowing detention without trial, raising the stakes in a long-running struggle for political power in the resource-rich but divided country. The law, known as the Internal Security Act, enables Malaysian authorities to detain indefinitely persons they consider to be security risks. In the past, al Qaeda-linked terrorists have been held under the provision. But opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and human rights activists say the law is also being used to...