Free Republic

According to Editor & Publisher and other sources, the Senate has worked out the wrinkles of a federal shield law to protect news gatherers from being forced to reveal confidential sources. The issues holding it up were from the White House involving classified leaks and national security issues. The major surprise however is it apparently covers freelancers and “citizen journalists,” a euphemism used to describe bloggers. "The negotiated compromise creates a fair standard to protect the public interest, journalists, the news media, bloggers, prosecutors and litigants," said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., a cosponsor of the Free Flow of Information Act...."

An incredible host of conservative bloggers, ranging from Mark Tapscott at The Examiner, who is a member of the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame, to me and Brian Faughnan at respective blogs at the Washington Times, to the directors of Red State, to Breitbart's blog, to several at Red County, to a particularly well-researched one by Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot at NRO, .... has stepped forward in solidarity with John McCormack of the Weekly Standard to demand that New York congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava withdraw .....

October 19, 2009 Obama Made Arlen Specter Big Promises For Switching Parties. Now, Specter Wants Him To Pay Up Howard Fineman Barack Obama and Ed Rendell were delighted when they convinced Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties earlier this year. But now that coup falls into the category of "be careful what you wish for," because the president and the governor of Pennyslvania have a problem on their hands: Arlen Specter. Here's the problem: Specter is up for re-election next year, and he was promised the full campaign backing of Obama and Rendell--not just in the general election but in...

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iranian bloggers won a major press award Friday for their efforts to cover the Islamic Republic's disputed presidential election. Iranian journalist Delbar Tavakoli, who fled the country after losing her job, received Friday the 2009 Mohamed Amin Award on behalf of the bloggers "for their commitment, bravery and dedication under harrowing conditions and extraordinary pressure while covering the presidential election." "Iranian bloggers redefined the concept of citizen journalism and social networking when they became the only source of news in Iran post-election," Christoph Pleitgen, head of Reuters News Agency media business said in a statement. Established in...

We have met the enemy, and according to Peggy Noonan, it is us!

There are rumors floating around that the Department of Justice has hired a group of ex-democratic bloggers to troll the internet for websites that are critical to President Obama and post comments that demand support for his policies. I can say that I have seen some troll activity on this site from lefties, but I didn't think anything of the situation...until now! The Muffled Oar first reported on this revelation: The Muffled Oar has received a great number of tips from DOJ employees about activities taking place within the Department since Holder became Attorney General.

press boxThe FTC's Mad Power Grab The commission's preposterous new endorsement guidelines.By Jack ShaferPosted Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009, at 6:29 PM ET If you're a blogger and you write about goods or services—and what blogger doesn't write about books, movies, music, theater, restaurants, home theaters, laptops, manicures, clothing, tutoring, bicycles, cars, boats, cameras, strollers, watches, lawn care, pharmaceuticals, gourmet food, maid service, hair care, concerts, banking, shipping, or septic tank service from time to time?—then you've just made yourself vulnerable to an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission.In new guidelines (PDF) released Oct. 5, the FTC put bloggers on notice...

I kind of feel sorry for Obama. The Nobel committee ripped him off. As is always the case when something is given undeserved and unearned, he has lost the opportunity to prove himself. The Nobel Peace Prize is probably something Barack Obama has daydreamed about. His astounding sense of entitlement and self no doubt had led him to believe that one day he would receive the Nobel prize. And who knows, maybe someday he would have earned it. He certainly has a global view of himself, as a leader whose abilities and charms know no limit. And maybe after a...

This is going to be felt worldwide (October 2009) Gerald Celente, Trends Research founder, discusses the US Dollar on Russia Today I say it over and over again. You can’t print phantom money out of thin air, backed by nothing, and producing practically nothing without destroying the dollar. They’ve been doing it for decades. — It’s more than just the demise of the dollar. This is going to be felt worldwide. There’s a major financial crisis ahead. The United State, the world’s super power, is failing on its most basic level - and, that’s the gold rule. Those who have...

This is going to be an ongoing series, I suspect - tracking government abuse of the citizenry via debt-shifting. What am I referring to? Simple: Back-door bailouts of banks and industry (notably the auto industry) through farcical programs that con the citizens of the nation to take on unsustainable debt, thereby transferring what should be a corporate or bank failure to into a whole bunch of personal bankruptcies. There are two programs in particular that exemplify this attempt; "cash for clunkers" and the various machinations in the housing space, including the insanely loose FHA credit procedures. Cash for Clunkers violated...

I'm going to go back to this quote by Barney Frank of the US House, because it says everything those in state and local governments need to know: Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview that the defaults were, in essence, worth it. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the bad loans occurred,” he said. “It was an effort to keep prices from falling too fast. That’s a policy.” Got it? It's a policy to screw the state and local governments. Huh, you say? It's simple, really:...

We were promised one, you know. Dennis Kneale, Larry Kudlow, hell, name a "mouthpiece" on ToutTV or in the sell-side of Fraud Street and you'll find someone claiming that "the recession is over." But if it is, how can this be true? Lockyer’s spoke before Controller John Chiang said state general fund revenue fell $1.1 billion below estimates during the first three months of the fiscal year that began July 1. Let's boil this down a bit: Sales tax revenues came in at $99.8 million, or 4.5% lower than expected. Income tax revenues were also off big, but remember that...

The rules are arcane, but their essence is simple. If a regular person says something online that an FTC official finds fishy, the agency can investigate. To do that, the rules say, feds will have to check out individuals' finances, examine what they've received in the mail and review what they've posted on the Internet for evidence of corporate taint. Obvious civil liberties concerns aside, the FTC leadership must be delusional. Even Google tracks only a small fraction of the torrent of new posts, comments, videos, podcasts and other online chatter added to the Internet every day. Now a bunch...

Respectable news outlets aren't the only ones having trouble processing the fact that a purple-eyed partisan like Andrew Breitbart is producing impactful journalism this season. The ancient Atlantic magazine–which, strangely, appears to have morphed into a sort of Blogger's Monthly–has been furrowing its brows at Breitbart & Co. both in print and online. Regular Atlantic contributor Conor Friedersdorf, writing at The Daily Beast (and earning a high-five from Andrew Sullivan), poses the question: ACORN is just the latest example of how conservative media love to blast The New York Times for its shortcomings. So why can't they live up to...

The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging for the first time, requiring writers on the Web to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The FTC said Monday its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final Web guidelines, which had been expected. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines up to $11,000 per violation.

Alaska Public Offices Commission staff says it’s now satisfied with Sarah Palin’s disclosures of her 2008 gifts and her husband’s Arctic Cat sponsorship. APOC and Palin went back and forth this summer over just what had to be disclosed. Palin didn't want to reveal details of the Arctic Cat sponsorship, saying it was proprietary information, and also argued that gifts were not “received” until they were opened.

Here is video of NBC's "Meet The Press" talking about the internet and bloggers and the effect it had on Van Jones' resignation. One of the panelists said "the internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered, information." (Watch Video)

When Obama appointed Cass Sustein to be in his Shadow Government to control the White House Office of Information, was it one more step in his effort to close down free speech on the Internet?

"While it is obvious the progressive blogosphere is superior, we are being out-organized on Twitter," said Gina Cooper, a blogger who helped organize Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of online liberal activists that met last week in Pittsburgh. "There is some catching up to do on the progressive side." Tracy Viselli, who attended Netroots Nation, agreed with Cooper and admitted that liberal bloogers are ceding this valuable territory to conservatives. "Twitter is a news funnel," she said. "Conservatives are very tightly knit and getting their message out very well."

US courts have generally been pretty good at protecting the anonymity of online speech from forced exposure -- in fact, as we're posting this story, we've come across yet another ruling protecting anonymous speech online. However, every so often a judge goes in the other direction. Earlier this year, we wrote about a case involving a model, Liskula Cohen, who was so upset about a blog that had a grand total of four posts insulting her, that she filed a lawsuit to uncover the anonymous blogger, claiming that it was defamatory to call her a "skank." Of course, most of...

Back in 2006 I spent six weeks traveling around Afghanistan with various U.S. Army units and reporting on what troops were dealing with in the "forgotten" war. Filing stories and calling my editors was always a tricky prospect, even without any of the heavy fighting that reporters there now are seeing.

Recalling a scene redolent of the Mos Eisley cantina, Shannyn Moore is credited with providing an indication of how it was that a group of misfit, individual bloggers in Alaska came together almost a year ago with the common purpose of destroying Sarah Palin: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Feeling like an endangered species, Alaska progressives are tight. The Alaska Bloggers are tighter. Right after the nomination of Sarah Palin for VP, Wasilla blogger, musician, professor, and all around renaissance man, Phil Munger, threw a party at his home-the first of many. Secrecies were sworn; we were not alone in front of our computers-we...

The anti-Palin hate bloggers in Alaska have attracted a great deal of attention nationally. One of those who has been watching them is Marc Ambinder, columnist for The Atlantic. His August 4 piece calls attention to a fact of political life that has been overshadowed in all of the uproar over the "Splitsville" hoax perpetrated by hate bloggers Jesse Griffin and Dennis Zaki and propagated by the rest of their "community" of bloggers. -snip- "Thirty days later no criminal investigations or indictments have surfaced. Nor has there been any news reported about such pending matters..." -snip- "Investigations and indictments can...

We don't subscribe to the notion recently floated by Rick Moran  in "Did Sarah Palin just 'Pwn' the media with divorce rumors?" that the Gryphen-Zaki meltdown over the weekend was the result of an elaborate Rovian setup brilliantly planned and executed by Sarah Palin: It's too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an "explanation" for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists. So I think there is at least the possibility, that either someone in the Palin camp with an ax to grind with the media - or, less likely, Palin herself - whispered a few...

Oh My God. I write two Tickers on The FDIC and banks' refusal to take their marks, and gee, you'd think someone over there might have read them! http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fdic-tells-banks-to-recognize-loan-losses-promptly-2009-08-03 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Monday that banks should recognize losses on home loans promptly and warned that failure to do so could delay efforts to mitigate the financial impact. Institutions must analyze the collectibility of the loans they hold for investment at least every quarter, the FDIC said in a statement on its Web site. Banks then have to keep an appropriate allowance for...

The whole birth certificate issue gets weirder still: "I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago...." But why are we supposed to rely on the testimony of Dr Fukino, whom I believe entirely. It is not my job as a journalist or yours as a...

This week, the House considered a resolution lauding the 50th anniversary of the admission of Hawaii as a state. After the the routine speeches in favor (there was no opposition), Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., yielded back the last seconds of time for debate. The Speaker pro-tem called for a voice vote on passage, which is also routine. And Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., who happened to be holding the floor for the Republican side, objected to the vote because of the absence of a quorum -- which is also routine. This led the chairman to postpone the floor vote until...

the video is back up here http://en.sevenload.com/videos/GEc10shT-Exposed-Ethicsgate-Obama-and-the-democrats-multi Exposed "Ethicsgate" Obama and the democrats multiple direct links to the political effort to destroy Sarah Palin ALASKAN BLOGGERS FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO HAD IT REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE IT SHOWS POLITICAL CONSPIRACY AND POSSIBLE CRIMES

Palin Hairdresser: NYT Was Lying About "Hair Thinning" Claim By Tim Lindell Chalk this up as Stupid Palin Meme of the Week: In a July 12th hit piece published on the front page of the New York Times, reporters Jim Rutenberg and Serge Kovaleski (assisted by Kim Severson and William Yardley in Alaska) made the following claim: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from her hairdresser and close friend, Jessica Steele. “Honestly, I think all of it just broke her heart,” Ms. Steele said in...

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor and friend to the national Messiah, has been tapped to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Sunstein was one of the major influences on a young Obama’s attitudes on government regulation and economics, a scary proposition considering the degree to which the Obama administration is attempting to pull us toward Soviet-style communism. According to the Journal, many of those familiar with Sunstein’s work and philosophy have said that his fingerprints are obvious in many of the administration’s policies, including credit card reform and...

Atlanta - Concerned about taxes, bailouts, government "pork," and rising deficits, thousands of Americans will spill out in cities from Atlanta to San Francisco this weekend, as part of a "Tea Party" movement that began earlier this year in protest of the economic stimulus bill. The July 4 event will be the second major Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protest, following an April 15 event that drew as many as half a million people to over 800 separate protests across the country. This weekend's protests – sure to feature Colonial garb, witty signs ("Don't tax me, bro!"), and references to...

Intentional self-destruction of a once powerful voice. 5th column or a huge gathering of extremely stupid people? Your guess is as good as mine. The Pubs continue to be a joke. ZOT!!! Thanks, Mod. I'm beside myself and really can't be held responsible.

In today's "Truly Delicious Irony" segment, the Federal Trade Commission, just months after so-called journalists decided who should win a presidential primary and subsequent election, is going to begin going after bloggers who make false claims about products and/or don't fully disclose conflicts of interest. Imagine that. As reported by the Associated Press Sunday: New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest. It would be the...

LEGISLATIVE ACTION ALERT!! MISSILE DEFENSE FUNDING – PART II by Lisa Piraneo, Director of Government Relations Dear America, This is the second of two Legislative Action Alerts this week on the very important issue of Missile Defense. Margaret Thatcher is reported to have said, “First you win the argument; then you win the vote.” This week, due in large part to your efforts, we have begun to win the argument in Congress on the issue of missile defense funding. On Monday we asked you to make phone calls to 11 influential Members of the House Armed Services Committee –...

A coalition of bloggers is appealing to supporters of Gov. Sarah Palin for donations in a week-long effort to raise more than $500,000 to help her pay her legal bills. Spearheaded by web site Conservatives4Palin, the bloggers launched their fundraising webathon Monday in a coordinated effort to help retire the Alaska governor's legal debts. The webathon is using professional-quality videos which call the ethics complaints filed against the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate "petty politics and frivolous attacks" and a "thermometer" graphic that displays how close the bloggers are to reaching their goal. The legal fund, called the Alaska Fund...

OK I will admit it, I never read Playboy for the articles, in fact in the good old days, when I could look at the magazine (before I realized the girls were my daughter's age) I never even knew that Playboy had page numbers. Today, I received a tweet from Allahpundit of Hot Air, alerting me to one of cruelest, most mean-spirited displays I have ever seen in the magazine, or on the net for that matter. In a column called So Right it's Wrong, freelance writer and former blogger Guy Cimbalo writes about "The top ten conservative women we...

In a move aimed at healing the rifts of American foreign policy decisions, President Obama will make a trip to Europe next month, including a trip to Dresden, Germany. The trip will consist of several stops and the President will meet with the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany. Also slated are several policy speeches. Perhaps the most controversial is a planned speech in which President Obama will formally apologize for American 'war crimes' during the Second World War. This would be particularly comforting to Europeans, who have long condemned American foreign policy actions, especially regarding civilians.

It was disappointing to many Republicans to see the National Republican Senatorial Committee get involved in the Charlie Crist vs. Marco Rubio primary in Florida. We've had the leadership of the Republican Party saying we need to get back to our principles and talking about how important it is to attract more young voters and Hispanic Americans. Then, we get a viable, young, conservative, Hispanic candidate running for Senate and they arrogantly try to shove him aside to make way for a better connected, moderate pol who's more acceptable to the GOP establishment. This cuts to the core of what's...

In many ways, Maureen Dowd and Joshua Micah Marshall personify new and old media. One is former political reporter and venerable columnist who dispenses bon mots from the New York Times editorial page once a week. The other is a blogging wunderkind who has blazed a trail with the liberal TalkingPointsMemo site. So when thejoshuablog (who's not Marshall) blogged over the weekend that Dowd had lifted, almost word for word, a slab of text from a blog by Marshall last week it was inevitable it would become a big deal. Unfortunately for Dowd, the furore shows little sign of abating...

The fuming and fussing by left-wing bloggers upset with Barack Obama is both ironic and amusing. Back in November of '08, these types thought they'd be getting their whole agenda, including exposés and criminal charges against George W. Bush and various Bush administration officials. But reality has intruded into the process, and now-President Obama has enough sense to realize that these left-wing agenda items are just not good ideas.

<p>A new proposal in Congress is threatening fines and jail time for what it calls "cyberbullying" – communications that include e-mails and text messages that "cause substantial emotional distress."</p> <p>The vague generalities are included in H.R. 1966 by California Democrat Linda Sanchez and about a dozen co-sponsors.</p>

The sudden crash in oil prices might be the smoking gun that shows speculation, rather than supply and demand, drove the huge run-up in oil futures last year. Daniel Fine of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology’s Center for Energy Policy told participants at a forum in Albuquerque Jan. 16 that massive, speculative trading by investment banks like Lehman Brothers, hedge funds and others is what drove oil above $140 per barrel.

Matthew Yglesias on the new tape released by Ayman al-Zawahri telling Muslims not to be fooled by Obama: "Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to the relatively small group of people known as al-Qaeda was the rise to power of George W. Bush, whose brutality, stupidity, and mendacity managed to do an enormous amount to discredit American power and to push those already inclined to be skeptical of the United States further in the direction of hostility and radicalism." Bush clearly caused this "small group of people" to do the following: The bombing of hotels in Yemen aimed at...

On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am a Republican flack. On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I discovered all this from the helpful feedback provided to me in the "reader comments". The vitriol of last year's presidential campaign has outlasted the election. For the right, this isn't terribly surprising; their guys lost the White House in 2008 and control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, so lashing out in frustration is to be expected. The left, however, is more...

(United States Army) This week the Army not only launched an official blog portal, but also an Army fan page on Facebook.

— The first line of his first blog from Tehran in September 2006 asks: "What is freedom?" Omidreza Mirsayafi answered his own question. "I don't know," he wrote, "but I know someday I will see its shadow falling on my land." Two and half years later, from behind the gray walls of Tehran's Evin Prison, he phoned his mother. They talked about his battle with depression behind bars. She asked if he was taking his heart medicine.

At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, Obama wants to make illegal aliens U.S. citizens. Furthermore, as I’ve mentioned before, low-wage laborers, which includes nearly all illegal aliens who work, are a drain on the economy and not the benefit that certain stupid free-market type economists would have you believe. But what Obama’s plan will do for sure is create millions of new Democratic voters, ensuring more liberal Democrats controlling the system. * * *

WASHINGTON — The White House has hired actor Kal Penn as a liaison between President Barack Obama’s administration and Hollywood. White House spokesman Shin Inouye said Tuesday that the actor who has a recurring role on Fox’s TV show “House” and has starred in several movies would join the staff as an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison. His role will be to connect Obama with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as arts and entertainment groups. Penn starred as Kumar in the movie, “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.” Penn was an Obama supporter...

Dennis Herrera is running for re-election as San Francisco's city attorney and loudly rumored to be eyeing the mayor's office down the road. So a few weeks ago, he invited about a dozen influential folks to a local restaurant for drinks (on his campaign's tab) and some face time. Those folks were local bloggers. Their questions didn't rock him on his heels initially. Instead, Herrera was quizzed about his favorite movie trilogy ("The Godfather") and what he'd write on a cardboard sign if he were homeless ("Wanna have fun?"). Soon the crowd turned serious and interrogated him about more typical...

Online journalists more confident than traditional brethren; half say political bias at news organizations is OK.