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(Reuters) - AOL Inc on Friday won the dismissal of a lawsuit by unpaid bloggers who complained they were deprived of their fair share of the roughly $315 million that the company paid last March to buy The Huffington Post website.

UK police seize computers of skeptic blogger in England Posted on December 14, 2011 by Anthony Watts 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. He writes: After surveying my ancient stack of Sun Sparcstations and PII 400 pc’s, they ended up settling for two laptops and...

For those of us that spend hours online, writing, blogging and reporting this judges decision is a serious additional threat to our freedom of expression. Citizen journalism, blogging, micro-blogging, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It is a form of journalism that isn’t controllable by the elite establishment. Expect more attacks as we continue to tear down the corrupt infrastructure known as the lame stream media. Here is the a wire service report about the decision: A federal judge in Portland, Ore., has ruled that a Montana blogger was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon...

A Blogging Milestone Noman passed 12,000 hits today and thought to reflect on his first nine months of blogging. He started on February 12th with a post entitled "Jimmy Carter's Second Term." It concerned Hosni Mubarak's fall in Egypt with American consent (if not help), and the comparison between President Obama and President Carter's governance of domestic and international affairs. Since then, he has vacillated from short-to-mid-size comments to lengthy essays. As hoped for, blogging has served to stimulate more formal writing for other fora, and even to order thoughts for a series of radio interviews. There have been 213...

A must read for bloggers of all stripes: how Donald Douglas from American Power  whupped the copyright trolls in court... 'Beating Righthaven' -here-

Today at Right Wing News John Hawkins asks, and sort of answers a question that has loomed in my mind since my own blog, The Looking Spoon, started. From today's post The Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere... Bloggers have asked me: So what's the strategy to deal with this? Really, it's simple: Get big or go home. Find a way to dramatically increase the size of your blog, expand into multiple websites that together are big, hook up with someone who's already big, or accept that there isn't much of a future in a small,...

Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall lost his endorsement deal from Champion sports apparel last week for tweeting his doubts that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by hijacked jetliners and for expressing his sentiments that we had "only heard one side" of the Osama Bin Laden story. Mendenhall quickly backed off from the pair of tweets. He deleted the 9/11 remark and published a blog post explaining that he wasn't a Bin Laden supporter. But it was too late. He had already joined the ranks of high-profile users who've been burned by microblogging. Keith Olbermann previously stepped...

So you finally decided to take the big step, to wade into the debates of the day, and lend your ever-so-wise voice to the great political public square. You’ve decided to become a political blogger. Now what? And what can you learn and expect as you step forth to ideological battle and proclaim the truth as you know it? I have blogged from a conservative point of view for many years, both as an individual as well as in a group blog format, and in that time I like to think that I’ve learned a few things about blogging along...

Having been a regular user of MSNBC owned Newsvine since December 2010, I hereby issue warning to all non-liberal people in America, who want to utilize their right to free speech: DO NOT attend and contribute on Newsvine!! This liberal owned and liberal biased outlet is a typical example of what happens, when a little group of far left extremists assume control over free speech. Poor, biased moderation of the site allows liberals to collapse articles and seeds if the "community" don't like the content, and while name calling and other personal attacks are deemed illegal according to the "Code...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9155J1V8XaM&feature=fvstTalk about ironic - Philadelphia to ban free speech - unless you got cash! Another attempt to take out the middle class by making it too expensive to participate. In Philadelphia if you don't have the cash you also get denied your first amendment rights. Hmmmmm Make this viral folks because the bull always starts small and keeps gaining momentum UNTIL it is stopped

Progressives grasp at any opportunity to quash free speech.  The internet and the anonymity it provides is a fat target for them.  How can internet speech be "managed," they ask? Stanley Fish explores this subject in his NY Times piece, Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet.  He employs the work of liberal thinkers who claim to be for free speech but then start throwing around concepts like "managing free speech" and coining terms like "low-value speech."  When you hear Sunsteinian progressives talk like this, watch out!  "What is remarkable about this volume is that the legal academics who...

After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren't kidding. The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported. The group will launch a recruitment drive this week coinciding with a weekend policy summit being held in Phoenix for state and local coordinators. Shelby Blakely, a stay-at-home mom from eastern Washington state who is organizing the project, said she has little doubt they will...

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...

Why sensible people avoid discussing race... I had Monday morning off and I wandered back into Left Blogistan.  I couldn't help myself...  Kinda like driving by an old girlfriend's house... The mid-term elections must have hit the lefties hard; they're cannibalizing themselves over there.I stumbled upon a thread that illustrates why sensible people don't discuss race. The thread is also a beautiful microcosm of liberalism itself. A blogger named Sheria wrote a piece about how she's tired of the left beating up on President Obama.  She larded her sermon with standard liberal pieties and pontifications, and topped it off with...

Read the first few paragraphs of this AP story on Catholic bloggers, and see if anything in particular strikes you: Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough. Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church. -In the Archdiocese of Boston, parishioners are dissecting the work of...

Inquiry: By chance, I was wondering if you chaps might be innocently wondering, as I have, as to the decrease, and/or otherwise, of the activity on personal blogs or websites, etc. that y'all may operate as a hobby in your spare time relating to any of a number of topics. If so, perhaps y'all may care to comment on this--if you get chance--I realize y'all may be quite busy....??? That would be nice. Semper Fidelis Gunny G aka: Dick Gaines ***** *****

How does a financially strapped city with a shrinking manufacturing base and rising unemployment attempt to make a little extra cash? Tax the bloggers. Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for a business license, whether or not the blog brings in a fraction of that amount in profit, according to the Philadelphia City Paper. Marilyn Bess blogs about eco-friendly living in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. She occasionally contributes to the DIY site eHow.com. Her profit in the last few years - $50. She told the City Paper that she received a letter from the city in May, demanding...

Are you a blogger in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? Do you have Google Adsense or some other sort of low-return ads on your blog? If so expect a letter soon from your friendly city treasurer demanding that you pay a $300 tax on your "money making business." For most people that maintain an active blog it is just a hobby. Some people blog daily but most only do so a few times a month. Many bloggers also participate in Google's advertising program called Adsense but few make much more than $20 or $30 a year from the effort. But...

A website that lists the victims of Righthaven LLC's "shake down" lawsuits that are causing irreparable harm to the blogging, non-profit and small business communities. Righthaven LLC -- a bottom feeding legal outfit -- has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue 'mom and pop' websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, community action, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to "settle out of court." All cases are being filed...

Well, folks, this is bound to happen more and more as time rolls onward in this New Media world of ours. A blogger is in trouble with local Ohio officials who are trying to Shut him down using a badly applied campaign finance law all because he has been critical of county officials on his blog. That's right, a county board is trying to silence the free political speech of a local Ohio blogger because he is critical of them. The Geauga County Board of Elections has filed charges against the owner of the Geauga Constitutional Council blog, independent blogger...

Ever wonder where the intemperate, aggressive name calling comes from on the Internet? Could be newspaper people blogging from their offices. Let’s face it; the Internet is filled with ad hominem attacks on people, often in the crudest terms. But here’s a perfectly good example that you don’t even have to turn on your computer to find. It’s right there on the opinion column of the Virginian Pilot (link to paid subscribers). It’s penned by Gene Smith, an editorial writer for the Fayetteville Observer and here’s how he characterizes people who don’t agree with him on the illegal immigration issue:...

Blog comments are like the graffiti of the untamed digital continent. Some are helpful, like the spray paint on the fence that says “beware of dog.� Others are very impressive, like a beautiful mural. Some obviously took a lot of time and thought. Others are done passionately and quickly. Some are for self-promotion, like a gang sign. Others are done simply to exercise our power to do harm and cause suffering. Many are angry. And still others leave us scratching our heads. As bloggers and blog readers, it’s helpful to distinguish between the different types. Blog comment sections can...

Getting to Know You Bethany Stotts, April 23, 2010 For all those bloggers out there who read our columns (and this blog) … Academia.org is now using pingbacks. If you write about us, be sure to ping our articles so we can visit your blogs and maybe post a link to yours as well!...

This was in the Rockford Illinois Craigs list volunteer section.Are you afraid of having the best health care in the world nationalized, like General Motors was? Are the taxes already too high for your liking? Has the policies of Socialists like Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and other Democrats left you or many of your friends and relatives unemployed and angry? Well maybe it's time you did something about it. I am looking for volunteers willing to write for a growing, nationally recognized political blog. Write hard hitting news articles and political opinion pieces...

Our very own E the Wise pointed out the other day that any visit to the blog Little Green Footballs has become a repulsive exercise and should be avoided at all costs. As an inquisitive glutton for online punishment I failed to heed his warning and came away feeling slightly dirty and almost ashamed of myself. I felt like I had broken a taboo or peeked into something that was designed to be hidden from the public view. It was embarrassing. LGF is a sad shell of what it once was. A shadow of its former self. The once vaunted...

Hi All - it has been a long time since I have posted on FreeRepublic. I am back and I will also be on several blogs - I am looking forward to reconnecting with the freeper community. In the meantime - I have continued in the CRA and am in my 4th Term as CRA Sgt at Arms. Looking forward to some 2010 election fun!!!

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...