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A court ruling last December would seem to indicate that no, bloggers are not privy to the same legal protections afforded so-called real journalists. Via the Washington Examiner: This past December, federal judge Marco Hernandez of Oregon issued a ruling in the libel trial of Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox that has dangerous First Amendment implications. Hernandez ruled that blogger Crystal Cox was not entitled to the same protection under media shield laws that other members of the press enjoy. This ruling made it easy for a jury to find her guilty of libel. That result threatens the First Amendment...

Rubio is the next MYTH ROMNEY, full of mandates, a license to steal law degree, and ready to mandate your personal freedom.I see that this MEGALOMANIAC LAWYER has made the unfortunate decision to cast his lot with the degenerate coward MEGALOMANIAC LAWYER FLIP SLICK WILLARD ROMNEY.Bad move.

These bright and shining faces belong to three jihadists who were convicted of charges related to their terrorist activities in Federal Court in North Carolina yesterday. And they wonder why the Marines piss on their dead bodies; In Federal Court in New Bern, NC today, three would-be Islamist terrorists were found guilty of a slew of terrorism-related charges in a planned attack on unsuspecting wives and children of Marine Corps personnel residing on the sprawling Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Ziyad Yaghi, 23; Hysen Sherifi, 27; and Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 24 all stood before Her Honor U.S. District Judge...

Indignant voices from the rightmost fringes of the Blogosphere... Toons/links at Reaganite Republican Have a great weekend, everybody~

Intellectually speaking, we live in fascinating, if dangerous, times. Given a larger view of history, it should be understood that nations, political systems, and currencies come and go on a fairly regular basis. Human freedom is an exception -- not the norm. There are four core components necessary for the existence of an independent, sovereign nation: A system of laws (constitutional or otherwise,) geographical borders, a sound monetary system, and a defensive function. Presently, the United States is failing (or trending toward failure) on the first three counts. Failure on two or more will lead to a failure of the...

Would you be outraged if the Department of Justice shut down The Foundry [1] without any warning and blocked access for more than a year? That’s exactly what happened to a hip-hop blog called Dajaz1.com [2], which was falsely accused of criminal copyright infringement [3]. The blog posted music from artists promoting their work. But federal authorities viewed it differently. They seized the domain name, then shared virtually no information with its owner for more than year. Only recently did they quietly drop the case [4]. The government’s handling of this hip-hop blog is fueling fears about legislation moving quickly...

Almost missed this one, but Eric Goldman alerts us to the dozen comments filed with the US Copyright Office concerning its plan to force everyone to keep re-registering their official DMCA agent in order to keep retaining the DMCA's safe harbors. As we've discussed in the past, in order to make use of the DMCA's safe harbors, you have to register an official DMCA agent with the Copyright Office. In fact, we've suggested that anyone running a blog or forum site do exactly that. Many of the companies that were successfully sued by Righthaven (before it was discovered Righthaven didn't...

The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence....

Simply said: when one truly digs in, MF Global exposes the 2011 equivalent of the 2008 AIG: virtually unlimited leverage via the shadow banking system, in which there are practically no hard assets backing the infinite layers of debt created above, and which when finally unwound, will create a cataclysmic collapse of all financial institutions, where every bank is daisy-chained to each other courtesy of multiple layers of "hypothecation, and re-hypothecation."

After two years on HLN, Joy Behar’s talk show will be cancelled come the end of the year, the network announced Thursday. “I am very proud of the show that we created at HLN and I owe tremendous thanks to the show team who made it possible,” Behar said in a statement. The NY Daily News adds: HLN general manager Scot Safon said, “Joy and her team produced over 500 episodes of a show that featured news-making interviews, great conversation and plenty of humor. We thank Joy for the many memorable moments she gave the HLN audience.” The final episode...

Seeking to woo skeptical conservative bloggers during a March 2011 conference call, Herman Cain pushed back hard against the notion that opposition research might turn up skeletons in his closet. Asked directly about negative information that might arise from opposition research, Cain never revealed the sexual harassment allegations he had known about for more than a decade, instead joking about his golf game — and aggressively insisting there was nothing to worry about. “I don’t have any of those kind of skeletons in my closet,” he assured the conservative bloggers. “And what I have told people [is] if they come...

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Down at the local firing range. Governor Rick Perry has a posse of bloggers bearing arms and using them. Roger Simon talks to Andrew Breitbart, Patrick Ruffini, and more.

Shaquille O'Neal(notes) is blaming President Barack Obama for his role in Boston Celtics guard Rajon Rondo's(notes) late-season shooting woes. And, well ... what? Shaq's blaming the president? What does he have to do with Rajon Rondo? As is usually the case for sitting U.S. presidents, Barack Obama has been blamed for his fair share of his country's misfortunes. Whether it's deserved or not, the buck stops with him, and anything from the escalating cost of wars to a massive deficit to the increase in price of frozen tilapia will result in an impassioned rant from the voting public. Or the...

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Byron York is chronicling the outrages committed by President Obama on his taxpayer-funded campaign swing through Iowa and the Midwest. I was in the midst of a post on Obama’s whine that he is the victim of “bad luck,” as reported by Byron, when his latest dispatch landed in my inbox: “Obama compares woes to Lincoln.” At his campaign-style town hall meeting in Decorah, Iowa, President Obama compared the criticism he has received from Republicans and other political opponents to the troubles faced by President Abraham Lincoln during the civil war. “Lincoln,” the president said, “they used to talk about...

Often the Left is so predictable. While Norway mourns the deaths of the 92 (so far) shooting victims, kook bloggers at FireDogLake, Democratic Underground, and elsewhere are already labelling the alleged killer to be "right wing." This meme appears to have started with a comment made by a Norwegian political science professor who speculated that the shooter might be "right wing." Even Sarah Palin is now being blamed for the shooting because the suspect reportedly favored the creation of a European Tea Party. The media keeps repeating the mantra that the shooter is "right wing." But what does it even...

The blog post, "Rep. Slosberg viciously attacks fellow Americans on July 4," generated a lot of comments, and it was read by people from all over the country. I followed up by calling Rep. Slosberg to ask him if he would apologize. He responded: "What else do you want talk about? It's over. That incident is over." Three times I asked, and three times I received the exact same answer. Slosberg ended the call by . . .

Looking for a few conservative bloggers to inhabit a discussion forum. The political nature of this forum has slipped considerably to the left and need some rock ribbed conservatives to maintain balance within the forum. The leftist there range from libertarian to extreme leftist. The Name of the forum is Diegetics and it is quite the hangout. If you are tired of preaching to the choir then please come and help me educate these poor liberals. http://diegetics.net/forum/index.php

Paul Grimaldi Email Journal staff and wire reports PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- More than 2,500 progressive political activists will come to Providence in June 2012 to take part in the annual Netroots Nation conference. But the group of progressive bloggers wants no competition for attention when it comes to town. The conference's organizers have taken steps that would keep a conservative group's traditional counter-event at a distance. Raven Brooks, Netroots Nation's executive director, said Tuesday the progressive group has a non-compete clause in its contracts with the Rhode Island Convention Center and two Providence hotels. The conservative group RightOnline has staged...

It's all right. For their service to the umma, they'll be stoned to death last. "Hijab-Wearing ‘Flash Mob’ Invades RightOnline," by Evan McMorris-Santoro for TPM, June 18 (thanks to Weasel Zippers): MINNEAPOLIS -- A group of around ten women in Muslim headscarves crashed the RightOnline conference for about ten minutes Saturday, protesting what they said was an incident targeting Muslim women Thursday night. The event was the latest spark kicked up by the proximity of Netroots Nation and RightOnline. The two conferences are blocks apart -- RightOnline is being held in a hotel many Netrootsers are staying in -- and...

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty.. oh wait, that’s not how this goes. Let’s try again. Imagine for a moment an old farm on the edge of the interstate. This farm has been a part of the community for years. All of the farmer’s friends love to come to the farmer’s house for meals and conversation. Sometimes, the farmer’s friends like to put up a sign on the land, right along the interstate,...

The Tea Party stands as a moral challenge to the status quo. It’s not a third-party movement. It’s an extra-party movement. It’s not political. It’s philosophical. It is a manifestation of the market, an example of how free minds and free will seep through the cracks of the established paradigm to fulfill unmet needs. Although it did not manifest in rallies and town halls until 2009, the seeds of the Tea Party were planted 15 years earlier. Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, propelled by the Contract with America. The sweeping reforms Republicans pledged to attempt were largely unsuccessful,...

The Tea Party stands as a moral challenge to the status quo. It’s not a third-party movement. It’s an extra-party movement. It’s not political. It’s philosophical. It is a manifestation of the market, an example of how free minds and free will seep through the cracks of the established paradigm to fulfill unmet needs. Although it did not manifest in rallies and town halls until 2009, the seeds of the Tea Party were planted 15 years earlier. Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, propelled by the Contract with America. The sweeping reforms Republicans pledged to attempt were largely unsuccessful,...

More details on the class action lawsuit a group of unpaid bloggers have filed against Arianna Huffington have emerged. The group, led by a freelancer and activist, and union organizer by the name of Jonathan Tasini -- who has contributed more than 250 blog posts to HuffPost since 2005 -- filed the complaint in a New York court Tuesday. They are seeking $105 million in damages on behalf of bloggers and other Huffington Post writers who submitted work for which they weren’t paid. $105 million. That is one third of what Arianna made on the sale. According to WaPo, Tasini...

Just came across this show recently and have been laughing my @ss off. This particular episode is a must-see! The premise: Village idiot starts his very own blog, and the locals react. Hilarity ensues.Click the links below. Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IV

Andrew Sullivan, who more or less invented the sort of incremental, obsessive blogging you see here and in a thousand other places, is moving from The Atlantic to the Daily Beast/Newsweek hybrid. Sullivan writes that he's excited about the moment and the skilled new management at the NewsBeast, and proud of his work on the Atlantic's revival, which make sense, but to me the key line in his announcement is this one: "Now we will ride a new Beast into a new decade." One of the things Sullivan pioneered was the split between journalist and institution, and though he's been...

A few days ago, in the shadow of the great Pyramids at Giza, the Egyptian monuments that draw millions of tourists to visit Egypt every year, the opinion among workers on the lower rungs of the economy was unanimous: The big man had to go. No, they weren't talking about Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator chased from power last Friday. On the president, opinions were mixed. But the answer to the question "what would you most like to see changed about the regime" could be boiled down to two words: Zahi Hawass. Mr. Hawass, who has run Egypt's Supreme Council...

Should Black People Walk Away from Valentine's Day Spending?By Boyce Watkins, PhD on Feb 14th 2011 10:56AM Most men know how expensive Valentine's Day can get. Someone decided that spending money is somehow a translation to showing love, which is an interesting, misguided relationship philosophy. Valentine's Day is one of the most over-hyped holidays known to man, with advertising starting almost right after Christmas. Any man in a serious relationship is well-aware of the pending doom of his social life if he doesn't flex his wallet at least a little bit on that special day. According to the National Federation's...

When someone says they don’t think President Barack Obama is actually a Christian, the expectation would be that they think he’s secretly a Muslim. Not Bill Maher. On tonight’s Real Time, in the process of arguing that Obama’s not really a centrist politically, Maher also revealed that he doesn’t think Obama’s actually Christian, either, but rather a secular humanist. The belief Maher apparently holds – that Obama isn’t actually a Christian, but merely pretends to be one to keep up appearances for the sake of his political career – strikes us as one of the most cynical things anyone could...

In a post I wrote regarding Michelle Obama and her plans to parent our children for us, I remarked about her $495 Tory Burch gardening boots. A few of the comments wondered why I brought them up, and why, as a capitalist, would I have a problem with pricey shoes? The boots were mentioned to remind readers of how out of touch with reality the First Lady is. The average American mama doesn’t have a single pair of shoes in her closet that cost that much, let alone gardening boots. When I’m inclined to work outdoors, I put on a...

The Constitution Club (www.Constitutionclub.org) is an established blog and is currently accepting applications for new authors who can provide interesting and fresh perspectives on the issues of the day. If you write from a conservative or right wing, libertarian perspective you are encouraged to contact us at constitutionclub@gmail.com. If you are new to blogging, a group blog like this is a good way to ease into blogging and get some good experience. We have a good group of bloggers to work with and a fun little blogging community of fellow conservatives. Some are experienced and some are not. A good...

From Bob Dylan’s lyrics to a real California workplace policy, progress is being made. Despite an economy on life support with only weeks, if not hours, remaining to survive fiscally before the State Treasurer of California begins issuing IOU’s for payments, legislators have come up with a plan. Their plan is now to force employers to accept employees who come to work stoned. This should really help light-up the ailing economy. It may sound like a joke, but it’s serious. A state lawmaker in California, during the nation’s worst recession, wants to outlaw employers from firing workers who come to...

Just wanted to share the best "Obama [heart] Reagan" humor I found out there, as a follow-up to last week's "How on God's Green Earth is Obama like Ronald Reagan" thread... doesn't look like many people went for the propaganda line, regardless of how hard the MSM scum from JournaList tried to ram it down our throats in unison... And I thought these were pretty darn funny~ Best of the Blogosphere/links/more at Reaganite Republican

Tonight, January 31, 2011, only hours away from a media boycott, or blackout of Sarah Palin -- pledged and proposed for all mainstream media by Dana Milbank -- Sarah Palin's volunteer internet army, of nearly 30 major online Palin blogs, is organized and ready to fight back. They are going on offense, launching their own full cyber-throated effort to make certain that Dana Milbank FAILS and Sarah Palin OWNS February. Organized, with their keyboards poised for a "shock and awe" battle against the proposed liberal Palin black-out, social media warriors intend to push stories about Palin every day for the...

This is biggish news in the Times and on Twitter, for reasons that utterly escape me. How can it still qualify as newsworthy that a Republican — actually, we don’t know if she’s a Republican — backs gay marriage when Dick Cheney is on record as being in favor? That’s as high as you can get on the political food chain short of Bush pere or fils. Laura Bush is also on record as supporting gay marriage, and another would-be Republican First Lady went so far as to cut an ad in support of repealing DADT. And we all know...

Get ready for it: If former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed El-Baradei becomes the next leader of Egypt, he will be the face proclaiming the victory of secular democracy. Don’t fall for it. El-Baradei is nothing but a mask for the Muslim Brotherhood, a group slick enough to know it’s better to have a prettier face than its own. The Muslim Brotherhood, despite being an Islamist group, has rallied behind El-Baradei to bring down the Mubarak regime. The thinking behind this is honestly stated by Brotherhood official Mohamed al-Katani who is quoted in the New York Times...

I write a lot about conservative talk radio, so (alas) I have to keep track of the Left’s hair-raising, borderline insane attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other hosts. Here’s a round up of some of the biggest and craziest (unsuccessful) campaigns to destroy these powerful and popular pundits. First up: the latest attempt to brand a talk radio host a “racist” fails miserably… #5 “Monkey hear, monkey don’t” Did you hear about the racist redneck talk radio host who referred to African-American students as “monkeys”? The truth is: he didn’t. Earlier this month, while criticizing his city’s dysfunctional...

Surveillance video appears to show drug smugglers using a catapult to transport narcotics over the border between Mexico and Arizona near Naco. (Video courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Big Brother Love: Jesse Jackson Admits FLOTUS is Taking Over Americans Diets and Calls For More Massive Gov Takeovers While Progressives Cheer http://www.theblaze.com/stories/big-brother-love-jesse-jackson-admits-flotus-is-taking-over-americans-diets-and-calls-for-more-massive-gov-takeovers-while-progressives-cheer/

The nation’s capital is freaking out over a winter snowstorm. But everyone else should be up in arms over the real snow job in Washington this week. While the Democrats continued to extol Obamacare and the president defended the behemoth law during the Date of the Union, HHS was quietly presiding over a massive Obamacare Waiver-mania explosion. When last we examined the growing list, privileged escapees topped 222. Now: The list is at 729 — plus 4 states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennesse). Among the many new union refugees are x new SEIU locals : -SEIU Health and Welfare...

Two weeks ago, the White House announced that Barack Obama’s re-election campaign would open its doors in March to start raising funds for the 2012 campaign. Obama intends on raising a billion dollars to win a second term, the Wall Street Journal reports, and that requires an early start. So today’s message to Congress to fix the public financing system for presidential elections rings a tad bit hollow, to say the least: The Obama administration issued a statement strongly opposing a House bill that would eliminate the public financing system for presidential primaries and campaigns, arguing the system must be...

Olbermann Replacement, Young Turk, Cenk Uygur Compares Beck to a Nazi Says His Plan is to Go After Fox News http://www.theblaze.com/stories/olbermann-replacement-young-turk-cenk-uygur-compares-beck-to-a-nazi-says-his-plan-is-to-go-after-fox-news/

Six days after Putin's puppet President Medvedev made his first-ever visit to and repledged Russia's support for a new jihadi cancer to be implanted in Israel, Abbas' fellow koranimals from Chechnya blew up the airport outside of Moscow, killing 35 and wounding over 150. Along with our condolences, and the "surprise... you reap what you sow" factor, astute readers will note that Al-Reuters had an interesting little tidbit in their "reporting":Islamist rebels [ah, how nice, Al Reuters calls them rebels....] have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland in the year before presidential...

Stunning Hypocrisy: Sharpton Bizarrely Rants Beck, Palin Tea Party & Fox Trying To Take Away Civil Rights & MLK Legacy, Calls on Crowd to Not “Let Them”, Same Day He Denounces Palin Rhetoric http://www.theblaze.com/stories/stunning-hypocrisy-sharpton-bizarrely-rants-beck-palin-tea-party-fox-trying-to-take-away-civil-rights-mlk-legacy-calls-on-crowd-to-not-let-them-same-day-he-denounces-palin-rhetoric/

Sorry but this is really worth a post. The last time the market actually dipped more than 0.001% was on November 26, as such this is a historic event (in a country whose attention span is +/- about 15 minutes). The Russell 2000, which his Chairness indicated is the only metric tracked by the Fed's third mandate, is down. And since the Fed controls (insert best Tepper voice) everything, this can only indicate that the Bernank is finally starting to get concerned about those food riots he has been reading all about in assorted fringe blogs.

While he may look like only a fraction of his former self, former vice-president Dick Cheney is still as sharp and opinionated as he was during his political career. And like his former boss George W. Bush, he’s stepping out of seclusion to once again acquaint himself with American television sets. In a sit-down with NBC recently, Cheney opened up about the Bush years and current events, as well as what lies ahead. He covered everything from Barack Obama (he’s still a “one-term” president), Sarah Palin (“I’m interested in Gov. Palin like a lot of people are.”), and even gave...

This isn't good folks. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.5 percent in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.5 percent before seasonal adjustment. The big gains here were in energy, up 4.6%. Coming right into the cold months this is not helpful. Not only was gasoline up 9.5% but fuel oil was up 4.9, which in the Northeast is a primary fuel. Natural gas was also up 1.4%. A look inside the data tables confirms - energy...