Free Republic

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...

This was supposed to be a one post affair. But after a round of posts by some co-bloggers (links here at Blue Collar Muse) and some attention from Hot Air, it was obvious that someone in David Smith's office had their panties very much in a wad. Perhaps we didn't fly under the radar because I emailed Smith's office a link to my post. Hey, I'm a giver. Maybe he's got someone trolling the blogs for him. (Taxpayer money? It's a legit question.) Whatever the case, this comment began showing up on almost all of the blog posts on the...

Hey, they keep telling us we need to act more like Democrats, right? Some disturbing heavy-handed, speech squashing thuggish garbage is going on in Maricopa County in my native state of Arizona. It seems that the county Board of Supervisors is loaded with a bunch of the "screw principles and spend all the money" Republicans we've all come to know and loathe these past few election cycles. More details from Blue Collar Muse: At issue are relationships members of the County Attorney’s office have with the media, including a few bloggers. Not all the media, however, just those beating up...

Jumping in Pools Blog is a website that specializes in writing realistic but fake stories, publishing them and then watching who will link to their bogus news story. The blog does not identify itself as a satire site and several of their satire pieces are so close to fact that it is hard to tell the difference. Don’t be fooled. Several conservatives have fallen for their pranks and Reuters even published one of their posts at least once. This is a dangerous website.

Are you a conservative or libertarian blogger? Do you take issue with and write pieces that don't mesh with Obama's policies? If you do, Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, is possibly getting feedback on what you've been blogging about.

Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, has apparently hired a cadre of left-wing, Democrat campaign bloggers to troll through the Internet looking for news stories and blog posts that denigrate the Obama agenda. After such websites are found it is the job of these secret lefty bloggers to leave comments that come to the support of Obamaism in the comments sections. It seems that Eric Holder has created his own little propaganda unit in a valiant effort to become the Bloggi Riefenstahl of the Obama era. As reported at The Muffled Oar, a blog that first broke the story of Holder's...

In How The Huffington Post Can Pay Its Bloggers, HuffPo blogger Michelle Haimoff seems to have gotten a tad miffed at how Arianna Huffington is making millions on the backs of her bloggers without “paying it forward,” as it were. Consequently, Haimoff has developed a prototype scheme on how Arianna can pay her long toiling bloggers to help fulfill her “responsibility” to journalism. I think that Haimoff, however, misses the point of the Huffington Post. It isn’t now and never was about “journalism.” It’s about left-wing advocacy and advertising sales. Journalists need not apply. As we discussed early in July,...

(CNSNews.com) – Michael Copps, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission and its former acting chairman, has circulated an internal report examining the state of media journalism in America and discussing ways to address issues such as the rise of media conglomerates and the prevalence of opinion journalism.

Look's like Obama's new pick has some history in ruling against freedom of speech on blogs. This gem comes from NBC: President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy has yet another tie to Connecticut. She sided against a student in the infamous “douche bag” case, and that has upset some free-speech advocates. Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against...

A federal judge has sent a Kansas man to prison for criticizing federal prosecutors, claiming that the man posed a threat of “continued criminal defamation of government counsel and witnesses.”

In addition to running NetRight Nation I also run StopACORN.org. We launched Stop ACORN late in September of 08. We kept it active until late November but lost the time to keep it alive. This is an important project and needs to be kept up! I need your help! Anyone out there interested in helping with Stop ACORN? We need people to help submit material, to help me build and maintain the bloggers coalition, and to promote the sites activities. If you have any desire to help with this please let me know at Adam@getliberty.org. You need JavaScript enabled to...

A wrap up... We conservatives have two major problems. I've said it dozens of times before but one of those problems is that we don't do "join" well. The left, on the other hand, does "join" exceedingly well. They gather together, share resources, and help each other very, very well. The other problem we have is cash. Again, the left funds as well as it joins. The left supports its side very handsomely with generous and constant donations. The left also has a bevy of deep pocketed supporters that target the new media with their money. Media Matters, George Soros,...

So what's your brand? Troll, angry man, defender? Interesting look at the new phenomenon of folks like you who comment on blogs like this. My guess is that everyone who regularly read and/or coments on this blog can recognize and identify al of the types below. The other day, I found myself writing down all of those types -- something I'd never done before -- and I thought I'd share them with you. Please don't take them personally. & Actually, do take them personally; but keep in mind that on those occasions when I comment on other sites, I myself...

NEWSPAPERS are dying but journalism is evolving, an acclaimed science writer told a gathering of the techno-hip at South By South West Interactive Festival. Steven Johnson equated newspapers to old growth forests, saying that under the canopy of that aged ecosystem blogging, citizen journalism, Twittering and other Internet-age information sharing is taking root. “I'm bullish on the future of news,” Johnson said. “I am not bullish on what is happening in the newspaper industry; it is ugly and it is going to get uglier. Great journalists are going to lose their jobs and cities are going to lose their newspapers.”...

HOWDY FREEPERS!!!!!!!This morning my op-ed focuses on one of Oklahoma's most well respected bloggers.Michael Bates is a well respected blogger who authors the blog Batesline (http://www.batesline.com) He also writes a column for an alternative media source, Urban Tulsa Weekly.When Michael composes a blog one of the things he always takes care to do is research his material for his blogs and get his facts straight.Recently, Mr. Bates was hit with a lawsuit by World Publishing Company, publishers of the Tulsa World. Apparently this had to do with a piece he composed on January 15 regarding the World's declining circulation.Now, here...

My therapist told me to take two shots at Chris Matthews and call him in the morning . . . Mike Barnicle is back to looking down his nose at bloggers. After Mika Brzezinski declared on today's Morning Joe that "blogging isn't journalism," the former Boston Globe columnist declared that "95%, 99% of blogging isn't journalism. It's therapy for the blogger." View video here.

Hello world, hello Free Republic, just posting my first post about blogging questions and I don't know where to post. Backroom? Chat? Bloggers? (I have the strange feeling someone will tell me.) What I want to know from you, is why you decided for the blogging service you are using. (As for me, I think two reasons speaking for blogger are that, first, wordpress' free templates predominantly use serif fonts which I would not use on the web but in the printed media, and, second, blogger has more options to edit the free templates.) Grüße aus Berlin P.S. Feel free...

Recently I was checking out a bunch of people on Twitter who began to follow my updates @dmscott. When I went to @AFPAA I was surprised to see the Twitter ID belonged to the US Air Force. There were less than 200 people following the Air Force, indicating someone new to Twitter. Now this is interesting I thought, the Air Force on Twitter. I sent a DM (direct message) to find out what they are doing and received an immediate answer from Capt. David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon. We...

When the news broke on Thursday of a freakish traffic accident that injured several people at the Chanukah Wonderland workshop run by the Lubavitch community of Woodmere, on Long Island, the story was picked up by the usual suspects: Newsday, The Daily News, The New York Post and The Associated Press. It also happened to be that day’s top North American offering of a much smaller — and somewhat more specialized — journalistic venture: Chabad.org News. Written and produced from a small home office in Israel by a husband-and-wife team, Chabad.org News is a nonprofit international reporting operation that focuses...

A young blogger and a writer who disguised an attack on the country’s dictator in the form of a love poem have received heavy jail sentences, in the latest blow to opponents of Burma’s military dictatorship.

Blogging is no longer what it was, because it has entered the mainstream IN THE anthropologically isolated subculture of elite bloggers, it was the equivalent of a watershed, and certainly a tear-shed. With “a heavy heart, and much consideration”, Jason Calacanis this summer announced his “retirement from blogging”, which he believed was “the right decision for me and my family”. Mr Calacanis, a founder of Weblogs, Inc., a blog network that he later sold to AOL, an internet portal, had been a member of the “A-list”—those bloggers with the most incoming links and the highest “authority” on blog-search engines such...

Model Three: I thought Model Two would be a workable model for years, until either the MSM itself went totally online or until almost all voters stopped paying attention to it. I was wrong! The Edwards scandal did Model Two in. For months, the MSM failed to report the increasingly plausible rumors of John Edwards' extramarital affair even as it became the widespread topic of conversation in blogs, in the National Enquirer, and among political types. The disconnect turned out to be painfully embarrassing for the MSM, especially when the rumors were finally "verified" with Edwards' confession. A lot of...

Please see: http://texdozier.com/?p=65 GUESS WHAT...NO WORKING WIRELESS CONNECTION IS AVAILABLE AT THE GOP CONVENTION; SORRY FOR THE LATE UPLOAD. I GUESS TECHNOLOGY THERE IS REMINISCENT OF MCCAIN'S INTERNET SKILLS. 7:18 = Touchy feely but very nicely produced 7:20 = Former NFL player and now pastor Miles McPherson Going to speak on character but also apply to character of the nation Mayor Nagin, referring to anyone who didn’t evacuate in time said “You’re on your own”. Goes into leaning on God for help (this is starting to look like the Democratic Convention except not near as many faith caucuses) Nice prayer...

Will be posting updates during the night; about to take a food break. Below is what I have so far. Last night's post can be found here: http://texdozier.com/?p=52 Here we go again…all times are central. 6:05 - Jim Doyle just cited his little child’s quote that “Obama will work hard”; granted, his child has more experience than Barack Obama. 6:06 - Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia (brought to you by Robert Byrd) 6:08 - Manchin’s “American Dream” story. 6:09 - “West Virginians value hard work, patriotism, and faith in God…they do the heavy lifting the economy…[they have] a PhD...

Check for updates; this is what we got so far: All times are central. 6:28 - Just sat down. Tonight we get to hear from Michelle Obama who I expect to tell the “American Dream” story of her husband and how he shares our values. 6:42 - The NYTs Christopher Buckley had a mock schedule for the DNC convention - title for Michelle’s speech: “If My Husband Was a Muslim, Wouldn’t I Know?”. 6:47 - The energy is truly tangible on that floor; nice music too. 6:48 - Speaking of music, look to see John Rich perform this song at...

Congratulate yourselves as being among the leading edge in Americans interested in the news. According to a recent Pew survey 37 percent of America's news consumers go to the Internet for their news. But it isn't all good news for our sources of news. For one thing, this survey also shows that many of us are logging on at work. This is the sort of thing that could be hurt if more and more businesses ban Internet use, as some have... Of course, there is more bad news for newspapers as well as TV viewers here, too. Read the rest...

Be with you in a sec. Gotta finish this bag of Cheetos. Man, what a mess down here in Mom's basement. Let's see, where were we? Barnicle. Right. Bloggers. Doesn't think much of us. On this evening's Hardball, decrying the decline of bi-partisanship, Barnicle put much of the blame on the blogosphere. Subbing for Chris Matthews, Barnicle had as his guest historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The jumping off point was a clip of Obama saying he could imagine naming McCain as his head of Homeland Security. Barnicle wondered whether that was feasible in what he sees as a hyper-partisan age,...

Tales from the Trail Tracking the 2008 U.S. campaign July 28th, 2008 Are you going to the conventions in St. Paul and Denver? This year’s nominating conventions are poised to be some of the most exciting and newsworthy in decades. And because of new technology and online distribution, entire elections can now hinge on moments captured not by traditional journalists, but by ordinary citizens and those closest to the action. Reuters is looking for participants in a new mobile journalism project that will capture this year’s conventions from the ground up. We will be equipping attendees with video cameras, and...

Blogger and Brooklyn College Professor of Business Mitchell Langbert has been doing a yeoman’s job investigating the records of Senator Obama’s birth certificate. Despite the pleas from many quarters of the blogosphere, thus far his birth certificate has not been made public, except for a proven forgery on the Daily Kos site and his own campaign site Fight the Smears. At this time, there is no proof that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, and therefore no proof of his eligibility to be president. What should be a simple matter of producing a paper document...

Blog Shut Down by 'Christian' Apologist's Threat Contact: Pastor Dustin Segers, Coalition of Concerned Bloggers, ChristianResearchNetwork.com, 336-848-7197 MEDIA ADVISORY, July 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- Pastor Dustin Segers submits the following and is available for comment: How safe are our blogs? That question was raised again when on the evening of July 26, 2008, a popular religious blog was shut down by an Internet service provider. A complaint filed by Christian author and apologist, Richard Abanes, claiming that one article on the religious opinion site, Apprising.org, had slandered him, caused the web host, IPower, to send its publisher, Ken Silva, a...

For two days last week, many of the men’s bathrooms at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here were turned into women’s bathrooms. The stalls on the second floor were lined with note cards featuring nurturing messages like “You are perfect.” Nearby, women were being dusted with blush and eye shadow, or having the kinks in their necks massaged. ... Other prominent female bloggers who did not attend the BlogHer conference agreed that there are unique challenges that women in the blogosphere face. “Women get dismissed in ways that men don’t,” said Megan McArdle, an associate editor at The Atlantic Monthly...

What is the ages old misconstruction of Shakespeare? "First kill all the lawyers." Well, one might excuse bloggers if they might wish to add the officers of the courts to that death sentence, at least if the experience of the bloggers at New York's "Room 8" blog are concerned. For Ben Smith and his fellow "Room 8" bloggers, the world got a bit topsy-turvey not long ago when he was served with a grand jury subpoena by state prosecutors demanding that the identities of anonymous posters on his website be revealed. Worse, the court wouldn't inform Mr. Smith exactly why...

Iran's parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the internet, reports said on Wednesday. MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to "toughen punishment for harming mental security in society," the ISNA news agency said. The text lists a wide range of crimes such rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty is already applicable. The crime of apostasy (the act of leaving a religion, in this case Islam) is also already punishable by...

Bloggers, like me, are voicing their views and commentary on the news (and falsehoods, etc) of the day as is our right under the constitution.  When a corporation tries to tell me I cannot comment, criticize (and more often correct) their lousy product I lose all interest in being reasonable.  There are lines you do not cross because they cannot be uncrossed. The-news-source-that-shall-not-be-named, which went after bloggers for excerpting and linking their biased and error prone ‘news’ articles, crossed that line - in full hypocrisy it seems: 1. The AP is essentially arguing that anyone who excerpts 33 to 79...

NEW YORK - The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online. Jim Kennedy, the AP's director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it. The meeting comes after AP sent a legal...

The McCain campaign has a special program encouraging its supporters to leave positive comments about the candidate on other blogs. Via Jonathan Martin, we learn that those who leave McCain talking points on “featured blogs� like conservative Red State and moonbat Daily Kos will earn “points:� Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain’s policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the...

The move on the Left from Hillary to Obama has all the characteristics of a nasty divorce. A few days ago I wrote about one of my associates who transferred his affection from the Clintons to Obama. He spoke about Hillary like she was a wife who had slept with his best friend. The expressions of loathing are especially graphic in the blogosphere. Thanks to Powerline we get a glimpse of what the Left is saying when they are not using four letter words to describe Hillary. Posts like this one from John Aravosis, with the title "Go away you...

The media frenzy surrounding Pope Benedict’s visit to the United States is being driven in part by a newcomer on the media block: bloggers. For the first time in history, a U.S. papal visit is being covered around the clock by bloggers of all stripes – Catholic and secular, independent and staff, spiritually focused and news focused – and they are doing what they do best, bringing online readers information almost as fast as it happens. It’s a new way of covering the pope, and, according to those on the front lines, it is changing the landscape of media coverage in...

Every so often in the blogosphere, on the Left and the Right, hostile debates over gender seem to rise up to the surface like a leviathan from the depths. Some male bloggers tend to think women get more links because they're women, some female bloggers think there's some sort of a "good ol’ boys" club that keeps them from getting big, and more than a few people seem to get huffy about the whole debate. However, the fact is that the issue is much more complex than it appears on the surface. The blogging experience ISN'T THE SAME for men...

Yes you heard right. We are looking for a few people who want to be contributers at White Devil Red Angle. Qualifications? Know your way around a browser, Be Conservative, Like to write. Must be willing to make at least 2 post a week. Come help expose China for the Commie Creeps they are. You can also throw in any liberal you want also. Commie Creep can be used for so many.

Looking for some conservatives who want to help as posters on my new blog White Devil Red Angle http://whitedevilredangel.mee.nu/ Responsibilities will be to post weekly on politics in America and china. Just about anything goes. Please shoot me a message on the page or here if you are interested. Thanks

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers' hero -- a "citizen journalist" turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes. Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital...

MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- Bloggers and free speech advocates are calling on prosecutors not to file charges against a teacher arrested for allegedly posting an anonymous comment online praising the Columbine shooters. In 1999, two Columbine High School students killed 12 fellow students, a teacher, and themselves. Some were disturbed by the post that police say James Buss left on a conservative blog, but other observers said it was a sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending. The suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher was arrested last week for the November 16 comment left on www.bootsandsabers.com, a blog on...

An article in USA Today touches on blogging among believing Christians, and remarks on the frequently combative nature of the posts: "For Christ's sake, stop!" declared the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Frank Page, pleading for civility in the Baptist blogosphere. Episcopalians and Anglicans duel incessantly over their faith and future in the Anglican Communion. Catholics focus on every topic from liturgy to law to spirituality. These are faith bloggers -- uncountable voices who contest, confess and consider religious beliefs, doctrines and denominational politics in their posts. Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may...

Media Bloggers Unite by: Bethany Stotts, November 15, 2007 Blogging has increased dramatically over the last few years, marked by proportionate increases in lawsuits. The alleged dangers of internet anonymity prompted Forbes writer, Victoria Murphy Barret, to write in her October article “Anonymity & the Internet” that “Today the Net still protects the abused and the disenfranchised...But it also shields creeps, criminals and pedophiles. It emboldens the mean-spirited and offers them a huge audience for spewing hatred and libel.” Libel remains the largest reason for all reported blog-related lawsuits, followed by privacy, copyright disputes, and harassment, noted Robert Cox, President...

Internet evangelism is by far the newest means of getting out the gospel message. With millions of blogs, articles, videos and interactive platforms for sharing the faith, this media must be taken seriously.

In a move that diminishes the legal distinctions between bloggers and journalists, on Aug. 1 a congressional panel voted to protect journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources -- and specifically included professional bloggers in the measure. While casual and hobby bloggers will not benefit from the newly revised Free Flow of Information Act, those that earn either all or part of their income from blogs will be able to enjoy the same protections as their journalist counterparts. Bloggers, many of whom consider themselves journalists whether or not they're officially recognized as such, feel that they should be entitled...

According to celebrity gossip blog PerezHilton.com, Barr's purported MySpace ramblings include, "I need to stop drinking, but I do not wish to," "I am in Hawaii on the beach drunk" and "When you are old, you pee your pants more it seems." ----------------------------------------- Barr has posted another message on RosanneWorld.com, claiming that the former intern has stolen a "private sex tape" from her.

http://groups.google.com/group/misc.writing/browse_thread/thread/e62e265ee4e686e5/0bd4ef79ab02c3e8 http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/298530.html ________ Says Andy Nevis at Young Insider (http://www. younginsider.blogspot.com): "The blog that I probably read the most is Free Republic (www.freerepublic.com). It is actually more of a message board, but it provides a place for conservative contributors from all over the world to come together and discuss issues and share information."

ALL OVER America, millions of voters don't know -- or care -- that Mike Gravel has an "artistic" side or that Hillary Clinton likes Celine Dion. Yes, it's hard to believe if you're a tuned-in, turned-on popular culture vulture umbilically connected to the blogosphere/videosphere. But cross the country and ask normal people about the latest Gravel ad and they'd think you don't know how to pronounce the word for tiny pebbles. Ask working folks about "You and I," the campaign song selected by Clinton in her recent Sopranos-spoof video, and most will shrug indifferently. Everyday people, in other words, are...