Free Republic

Stack cakes, go-devils, and Abner, the wild monkey of the Smokies.

I am thinking of getting a facebook page. Some friends, and I, wish to start a joint blog to promote our group. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? All the facebook users that I know, just use the page to find old friends. But I want to use it for business purposes. I would appreciate you sharing some of your knowledge

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission issued an 81 page document entitled “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” requiring bloggers who write testimonials about products to disclose gifts or payments they receive. So if a company sends you a dollar-store toy, you will be scrutinized by the government, regardless whether you were asked to post a review or not. Whether it be free review copies of books, trips to oil rigs, payments, t-shirts, whatever it is, you better disclose it, to Uncle Sam, or, as the Washington Post reports, you’ll be fined up to $11,000 in fines...

For those of you who appreciate EMS humor, you may find this blog entertaining!

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While Conservatives, Republicans, hell, Americans are starting to mobilize 100% against Obama's agenda, for the 2010 mid-term elections in the House & Senate, not to mention fight back against his government takeover of health care, the auto industry, and union legislation, what are Conservative bloggers doing?

Free Republic used to be the most up to date web site where you could go for the latest news. Now it's been overrun with so many personal blogs and opinions that it's a chore to wade through all the personal stuff to find the real headline news. Even religous post like the daily rants of Joel Osteen, (whom I detest because he's a fake getting rich off gullible Americans)is allowed to be posted on a regular basis but you're not allowed to refute anything he says. Why is he not being put in religion where he belongs? The categories...

But this, as someone has said, can be a teachable moment. The real speech you should let your children hear will come Wednesday night, when the President addresses a joint session of Congress, the first non-State of the Union type speech since 9/11. Let your kids hear what the President has to say, then discuss it with them. Might I even suggest a few topics for discussion as well...

An archaic, politically incorrect term is beginning to make a comeback in the media and Liberal blogs as a tool to silence critics and end debate on Obama’s policies. Uppity, once a word applied to people of colour who were refusing to be subservient, is now being used by people of colour and Liberals to describe themselves and those they support. This has been happening for some time, but was made particularly obvious during the recent Van Jones scandal. Van Jones himself used the term during his now infamous address at UC Berkley. In a response to a question about...

Well that disgusting cesspool of pajama clad reporters has done it again. No, not drive another administration official from office, or kill another overbearing, budget busting, border bashing bill. Although those sewer drenched on-line reporters have done all that and more. No, once again those whacky pj kids (keep in mind the vast majority are professionals, lawyers, doctors,professors, former journalists) have once again done the work the main stream media either would not, could not or simply chose not to do.

Two new speeches discussing a movement for 21st century domestic and national security solutions Nat'l Security: LIVE webcast Monday, July 20th at 10am (ET)Domestic: Now available to view at Newt.orgThis Monday morning, July 20th, in a LIVE webcast, Newt gives a speech laying out a national security agenda at the Heritage Foundation.First this past Friday, Newt made the case for a movement for alternative solutions to the Left's agenda. Entitled For America to be America, 2 + 2 must always equal 4, you can view the full speech here at Newt.org.Newt's national security speech, at Heritage, will be webcast...

Facebook Inc. is providing new details of how an attack aimed at a Georgian blogger Thursday disrupted its site and crashed others, including Twitter Inc. and LiveJournal Inc. The company rooted out the cause of the massive denial-of-service attack, said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, after noticing that the compromised computers that began flooding its site Thursday morning were directing traffic to the profile page of a single pro-Georgian blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia. The Cyxymu blogger couldn't immediately be reached. In a blog post Friday, Twitter co-founder Biz...

There is a major drawback to blogs, the Internet, even up-to-the-minute cable news. Oh, it isn’t a drawback specific to those venues but it is one that makes itself felt sooner and with a woeful result there. I call it “the next big thing factor.” It is that state of being so hungry to post “the next big thing” that good sense and often the facts become less important than being first and loudest with the story. In the Internet age this problem leads often to the sensational story that deflates on the facts, the “fact” that isn’t one, or...

Today on the conservative blog, Hot Air, had this story about initial weekly jobless claims. The story's thesis: this new report is further evidence that Obama's employment strategy is failing. The story points out that jobs report was up 25 thousand jobs from the previous week. The story does mention that jobless claims are down but dismisses that as inconsequential.

David Axelrod's son is following his father's career path -- that is, the one he had before becoming a political strategist. Ethan Axelrod is joining the Huffington Post, the liberal Web site that has been largely supportive of President Obama. His dad, now a White House senior adviser, was a Chicago Tribune reporter until he quit in 1984 to help run a Senate campaign (and still has a soft spot for newspapers, though his old one is in bankruptcy). "I've been interested in journalism for a while," the 22-year-old Axelrod said Tuesday. "I heard through my father that they were...

<p>I see that r@cist, hate-filled j_rks have been exercising their free speech over at Free Republic, a political blog directed at readers of the hard right wing persuasion.....</p> <p>But a post on FR last week (now pulled) that included a picture of adorable 11-year-old Malia Obama, wearing a peace sign T-shirt in Italy while her father attended the G8 summit, generated commentary of such venom and hate that it drew attention from writers on both sides of the ideological spectrum.</p>

(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.

“HI, I’m Judy Nichols. Welcome to my rant.” Thus was born Rantings of a Crazed Soccer Mom, the blog of a stay-at-home mother and murder-mystery writer from Wilmington, N.C. Mrs. Nichols, 52, put up her first post in late 2004, serving up a litany of gripes about the Bush administration and people who thought they had “a monopoly on morality.” After urging her readers to vote for John Kerry, she closed with a flourish: “Practice compassionate regime change.” The post generated no comments.

from the seems-to-leave-a-lot-of-leeway dept Back in May we wrote about a lawsuit questioning whether or not a blogger could use journalism shield laws to protect a source who sent her info she used for a blog post. The company the info was about is suing her for slander (which is odd, since slander is usually spoken, while libel is written). The woman, Shellee Hale tried to claim that she was protected under New Jersey's shield law, which allows a journalist to protect sources. In writing about this case originally, we pointed out that the judge in question clearly did not...

In case you haven't been reading the conservative blogs over the weekend (and judging by our numbers here, you haven't) I've provided links to some of the best and/or most entertaining posts I've read from the past few days.

Through an arraignment from the folks At Wikio Yidwithlid was able to obtain the July Rankings for Political Blogs a few days before they are released (7/5). See Below. Huffington kept the top position but NRO's the Corner was able to move up one spot to number 2. One of my favorite blogs, Hot AIR moved into the top ten (although personally I think it should be a bit higher). Others moving up are some other Sammy Favorites such as Gateway Pundit and Newsbusters For those of the Liberal Persuasion Fivethirtyeight moved up to the top ten possibly taking readership...

Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed. No, Posner does not work for the Associated Press (which also has some strange ideas on linking). He is (normally) considered to be one of the great legal minds of our time. Posner is a United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and legal scholar who was once considered a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is someone who should know better....

Maybe on the left. But since the election, the righty blogs are coming back in good shape.

(06-16) 20:52 PDT -- Little about Austin Heap's first online venture, a site hosting free episodes of the cartoon "South Park," suggested he would one day use his computer skills to challenge a government. But for the past few days, Heap, an IT director in San Francisco, has been on the virtual front lines of the crisis in Iran, helping people there protest the presidential election, which opponents of the incumbent regime maintain was fraudulent. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets since Saturday, organizing and sharing news on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The...

Dear Mr. President, You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them. I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with...

Dennis Zaki's Melting Trig Truth 'Iceberg' By Videmus Omnia Dennis Zaki is an Alaskan freelance journalist who operates the website Alaska Report, and a charter member of the coalition of liberal Alaskan bloggers who have worked hard to undermine Governor Palin since her VP nomination. In late April, Zaki began running a teaser headline on his front page which stated: ------------------------------------------------------ Rumor Central: Whopper story heading towards the S.S. Palin An iceberg is heading toward the Palins. Can it be stopped? I don't think so. Will it sink the ship, all signs say yes. Stay tuned... -------------------------------------------------------

Freepers do it more often while Michelle Malkin, HotAir, American Thinker, and Washington Monthly Blog sites are trending higher for the past year. As expected, traffic significantly fell off after the presidential election for all sites. DailyKos and most liberal blog sites are trending lower than their conservative blog counterparts. Favorite search term for Freepers include “somali pirates” and favorite tags for liberal sites: “liberal”. Go figure! You know they say apples don’t fall far from the tree. The trend graphs below compare selected Political Blog websites using monthly unique visits by domain for the past 13 months. See all...

The London newsies of Fleet Street have no respect -- for very much at all, including the Queen, PM Gordon Brown or -- shock! -- not even for His Utterliness Barack Hussein Obama, He Who Must Not Be Laughed At. This lèse majesté will no doubt upset the ranks of the American media, which has transformed the fine art of butt-kissing into a veritable mob frenzy at any appearance of the One. The White House press corps is now completely supine, utterly shameless in its groveling cowardice. Stalin himself couldn't have wished for a more slobbering press corps. Rather than...

Thanks to my mother-in-law, commenter VinceP1974 and @JenFidel via Twitter for alerting me to the fact that Rush Limbaugh highlighted this blog post of mine about Colin Powell and Tom Ridge on his nationally-syndicated programme yesterday. With an estimated 13.5 million listeners a week, Limbaugh is the most popular talk radio host in America. Here's what he said, according to the transcript on his site: RUSH: Interesting piece - it's a blog - by Toby Harnden at the UK Telegraph. The headline of his piece here: "What Right Do Colin Powell and Tom Ridge Have to Lecture the Republican Party?"...

Fathers, Brothers and Sisters: Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! Thanks to the good offices of George and Ashley Weis of Tekeme.com, veritable Michaelangelos of computer graphics design, Vivificat and Vivificat en Español now display a brand new template that I hope better conveys what this vehicle of self-expression is all about. They worked with me at every step of the way and got to know me, in order to better capture the essence that I wanted to convey and share with all of you. Visit the blogs at http://www.vivificat.com/ and http://vivificar.blogspot.com/ and see for yourselves. The new template...

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jazz musician and Web designer Charles Johnson has devoted his blog, Little Green Footballs, to exposing Muslim extremism in and outside the United States. His targets have included the Council on American-Islamic Relations, filmmaker Michael Moore, Reuters, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Dan Rather, and the late pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie — who some LGF commenters (not Johnson) call “St. Pancake,” a tribute to the Israeli steamroller that killed her. LGF helped write the lexicon of the self-styled “anti-Jihadist” blogosphere — from “moonbat” (”an unthinking or insane leftist”) to “anti-idiotarian” (”anyone who grasps...

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

Atlanta - They came to public squares and parks across the country by the hundreds and thousands on Tax Day, April 15, hoping for nothing less than a second American revolution. Their "tea parties" are part of a burgeoning national movement, they said – a nonpartisan wave of Americans outraged by Washington's profligacy and its intrusion into every aspect of daily life. And yet ... only a whisper in the mainstream press, they complain. To tea partyers, the disconnect points up the wide divide between elite media and the population at large. To others, any downplaying of the protests is...

There's been a lot of talk recently about what is being lost with the death of newspapers. But less discussed is what is being GAINED. And that is that the Web is a much more interactive, participatory medium that a newspaper can ever be. One controversial or memorable blog entry can attract more comments than entire career as a newspaper reporter. Just as important, there is no filter -- no copy editor -- to get between you and those armies of commentors out there. And those commentors come in many forms -- more than most of us ever imagined. Here's...

...However, there's another type of site engaging in copyright infringement, in a far more defensible way. These are the whole-album bloggers, the modern-day cratediggers who post records long out of print, and so obscure as to have barely existed. These blogs democratise record collecting, making the arcane – Turkish prog, Italian soundtracks, Puerto Rican 45s – accessible to all. The cratedigging bloggers think their posts are on solid moral ground. "If an LP is out of print, there are no sales to be affected, so no one suffers any losses," says Smooth, of My Jazz World. "If the industry cannot...

Hamsher is actually surprised by this? The Democrats are treating bloggers just like they've always treated blacks and other minorities; they wink at you and make you feel special and once they win the election they forget about you until the next one. Mark my words, they will come around in early 2010 and make you feel all warm and fuzzy until we get to December 2010 and they'll blow you off again.

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

Long gone are the days when President Kennedy used to say he got more out of the New York Times than out of the CIA. The print media are besieged. Foreign bureaus of newspapers and national magazines have been closed by the score all over the world. Washington's National Press Building has dozens of offices for rent. Daily newspapers are dying in print and reincarnated online, where they compete with everything from free blogs to free social networks - e.g., YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Newspaper bankruptcy attorneys are prospering. And few people can remember accurately what they caught...

I have noticed that a lot of times, certain articles are censored out by internet filters. keywords such as fascism, liberalnazis, stormfront and nambla are censored even though they are articles about nambla or describing fascism. To me it sounds like a good way to block the public from viewing the similarities of Liberal Democrat's and Hitler's Nazis. I think it might be a good idea to remove certain keywords so that there is no confusion between websites advocating fascism and those like this one that refute and expose it. the mods might want to do that and anyone here...

To sum up this considerable rant, I don't want to see the local fishwrap go the way of the VCR. I want a vibrant, unbiased print media where every politician should fear for his seat. I want a media that will not blame the mortgage meltdown solely on industry but also on the Chris Dodd's and Barney Franks of the world who made the laws that allowed this to happen. I want to pick up the Inquirer and read a piece by Ed Rendell one day, Bill Kristol the next and Michael Smerconish the next. I want to read about...

Ross Douthat, 29, a senior editor and conservative blogger for The Atlantic magazine, has been hired by The New York Times to write a regular column online and then fill the weekly Op-ed slot occupied by William Kristol during 2008. A New York Times spokeswoman confirmed the hiring to E&P this afternoon. Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, asked by E&P's Joe Strupp why Douthat had been picked, cited his youth, Republican politics, "iconoclast" leanings and intelligence. He also said that he had interviewed several applicants after reading widely the work of many conservatives (see separate story). Rosenthal had sent around...

I am doing a personal survey, wondering what others are doing, on and off the Internet, in terms of resources and organizations in the following areas: "Freedom's Monitors"; some examples are - The Federalist Society, ACLJ, FIRE, Christian Freedom International, etc. "Commentary and Analysis"; some examples are - National Review Online, Townhall, Front Page Magazine, etc. "News Watchers"; an example is - Newsbusters "Conservative Blogs and Activism Organizations" "Issue Groups" - groups whose activity is dedicated to primarily a single issue - like a "Right to Life" group might be considered "Economic Analysis" - for example - CATO, or The...

In a careful message, prime minister Wen "forgives" the young man from Cambridge. Government sources say that the young man has apologized. But Chinese bloggers are praising the gesture as "freedom of expression," a symbol of what many Chinese would like to do.Prime minister Wen Jiabao is asking for "clemency" for the German student who threw a shoe at him (missing) on February 2, during his speech at the University of Cambridge (Great Britain). But while the Chinese government says that the young man has apologized, Chinese internet users are applauding his exemplary demonstration of "freedom of expression." The website...

Link only - Hackers take down ring of key progressive blogs

And the nominees are: Hot Air Daily Kos Huffington Post Gawker Ben Smith - Politico The Consumerist Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Dish Comment is free... Boing Boing Threat Level - Wired Blogs

Week of babies and lies Sarah Palin talks about her daughter's baby, and a hoax that fooled Oprah Winfrey falls apart. Buzz Week in Review A collective exhale ushered the volatile 2008 out the door this week, although one baby who caused a political storm managed to quietly slip himself out before the end. Meanwhile, a long-time Oprah hoax and high-seas piracy stirred up the Buzz—and the searches—during this transition period. Mom, Do We Have to Do a Combo Celebration? Bristol Palin's boy emerged not as the grandson of the first female vice president, but as another December baby who...

Just by reading this online story, you are part of a groundbreaking trend. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released last week, the Internet has passed newspapers as the most popular source for news. Only television surpassed the Net, with about 70 percent of Americans saying they get most of their national and international news from the ubiquitous box. About 40 percent say they get most of their news from the Net, an increase of 16 percent from September 2007. Newspapers are the main source for about 35 percent. This...

Barack Obama denies having contact with the indicted Illinois governor who tried to sell his old Senate seat yet the president elect’s top advisor revealed last month that the men, longtime political pals, had in fact spoken about a replacement. When a massive federal indictment charging Rod Blagojevich with multiple corruption counts was made public yesterday, Camp Obama suddenly diagnosed the second-term Democrat governor with political plague. The nation’s soon-to-be commander-in-chief claimed to barely know his close political ally. After all, who wants to be connected to a notoriously crooked politician who just got arrested and charged with selling the...

New technology? It's all a mistake Italian bloggers are up in arms at a court ruling early this year that suggests almost all Italian blogs are illegal. This month, a senior Italian politician went one step further, warning that most web activity is likely to be against the law. The story begins back in May, when a judge in Modica (in Sicily) found local historian and author Carlo Ruta guilty of the crime of "stampa clandestina" – or publishing a "clandestine" newspaper – in respect of his blog. The judge ruled that since the blog had a headline, that made...

On Wednesday night, Mumbai resident Asfaq Tapia heard two blasts. Before turning in, he sleepily noted it on his Twitter account, a Web site that lets users broadcast short messages about what they are doing. "Later, I started receiving phone calls saying, 'Are you ok? Where are you?' At that point I realized something major has happened," said Tapia, 24 years old, who then started broadcasting on-the-ground updates, including from a hospital near one of the attacked hotels. The Mumbai attacks have unleashed a storm of live updates from its techie residents, swelling traffic and content on sites such as...