Free Republic

I'm officially endorsing Newt Gingrich for president today. Was going to wait until after Florida, but see no reason to delay. We need Newt to win in South Carolina and Florida to stop any possible momentum building up for the establishment big government, statist, abortionist RINO!!

Over the weekend, FR broke the story about the newspaper pool reporter who was detained in a closet for a total of about two hours so he could not talk to attendees at a Joe Biden fundraiser. Other sites picked up the story, it went super-viral on the 'net, and now has become so big ABC and FOX both covered the story. At ABC, WNT covered the story with Jake Tapper last night, and this morning, this little jewel ran on GMA. The FR-inspired story also ran in traditional newspapers, such as the NY Post, NY Daily News, Times of...

The Internet's been buzzing with talk about how members of the U.S. Tea Party movement have been getting out the vote for Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars. The blog Jezebel had a post about it today, complete with quotes from conservative message boards about how Bristol's supporters were exploiting ABC's email voting system to cast multiple ballots for Sarah Palin's daughter. Jezebel quoted one site, FreeRepublic.com, that urged its members to "make liberal heads explode" by voting for Bristol, "even though she is not the best dancer." Well, my liberal head is kind of exploding right now because...

In a report released today entitled, Tea Party Nationalism, the NAACP falsely accuses Free Republic of being "an important space for...racist(sic)" and of having as a member the Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn.In falsely accusing Free Republic of being a haven for racists, the NAACP report notes Free Republic's front page promotes the Tea Party Express. However, the report fails to note the front page also includes several statements warning that racism and violence are not welcome on Free Republic:"Please enjoy our forum, but also please remember to use common courtesy when posting and refrain from posting personal attacks,...

The Huffington Post has pulled an article published this morning targeting Glenn Beck with a $100,000 bounty after news of the threat was broken on Free Republic.The article, titled $100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tapes has been replaced with the following message:Editor's Note: This piece was published directly to the Huffington Post by its author. It didn't meet our editorial standards and has been removed from the site.The URL for the pulled article reflects the title: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beau-friedlander/100000-for-glenn-becks-se_b_698724.html The author of the threat, Beau Friedlander, is the former editor-in-chief of Air America.Here is the text of Friedlander's call for information to...

AlterNet is claiming that it has uncovered a "widespread campaign of censorship" executed by a group of "influential" conservative and right-wing Digg members. The site - which defines itself as a viable "alternative to the commercial media onslaught" - refers to Digg as both a "behemoth" and a "powerhouse." "The [Digg] model [makes] it very susceptible to external gaming whereby users from certain groups attempt to push their viewpoint or articles to the front page to give them traction," claimed senior news editor "Oleoleolson." "But the inverse of this effect is more devastating, as Bury brigades could effectively remove stories...

If you’re at all web-savvy, you’ve probably heard of Digg.com. Founded in 2006, Digg is the reigning king of the social news ecosystem, cracking the top 50 websites in the U.S. and the top 100 worldwide. Its million-plus users democratically filter the torrent of online media, upvoting or “digging” desired content while “burying” rubbish and spam. The most popular content is promoted to the site’s highly-trafficked front page. The result is a peek into the consciousness of the internet: a mixture of comics, videos, sensationalism, and breaking news that is the growing face of new media.Digg’s popularity makes it...

Imagine for a moment your grandmother creating a blog to talk about her gardening. One of her friends leaves a comment on her blog with a news article about gardens in her area. Sounds innocent enough? Actions like this happen every second on the Internet. Now imagine the news source in the comment suddenly, without warning, suing your grandmother for the comment left on her blog, demanding high monetary compensation and possibly even control of her blog. Incidents like this happen all the time. The latest targets of these types of lawsuits include Jim Robinson, a disabled veteran, and his website FreeRepublic.com. Free Republic...

A conservative news-sharing website with plenty of experience in dealing with copyright issues has been sued for copyright infringement after Las Vegas Review-Journal stories allegedly were posted on its site. Free Republic LLC, James C. Robinson and John Robinson, who are associated with the website www.freerepublic.com in Fresno, Calif., were sued in federal court in Las Vegas on Monday over the postings.

So Jason Levin is the total moron who put together the “Crash the Tea Party” web site. Levin is not your garden variety moron though. I mean it takes a pretty impressive level of idiocy to attempt to covertly infiltrate the biggest and most widely covered political movement in the country at the moment using a publicly available web site to provide details and solicit support for your plan. This idea is so completely idiotic that when I first heard about it I figured Levin would turn out to be an internet marketer and that this was really just a...

A sign created by a poster at Free Republic, and then recreated in a Captain America comic, has led Marvel to admit a mistake. *updated "It looks like Marvel Comic's Captain America is throwing his mighty shield at the Tea Party Movement. Warner Todd Huston wrote on his Publius forum blog that the super-powered soldier who fought the Nazis in WWII observes with disdain Americans who are seemingly compared to Tea Party Movement protesters of today:"In preparation for the infiltration, Marvel Comics depicts the two super heroes out of costume and observing from a rooftop a street filled with what...

In a classic example of "why-did-they-do-that?" Kristinn at Free Republic tries to play Matrix with Conservative Radio Host Rush Limbaugh's terrible and insensitive Haiti comments. Kristinn claims this: (snip) Kristinn didn't listen to what Rush Limbaugh said, or did hear it but only picked out what she wanted to hear and not what Ruch Limbaugh said. Here's what Rush Limbaugh said: (snip)

(Reason #)8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

Yesterday, the White House announced that it was removing Alma Thomas’ plagiaristic piece “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from its walls. The White House announced that the painting was moved “because it didn’t fit the space right.” The Washington Post pointed out that posters at FreeRepublic.com had examined the similarity between “Watusi (Hard Edge)” and Henri Matisse’s “The Snail” (1953), ignoring the fact that Big Hollywood actually broke the story. The Washington Post covered for the White House, explaining, “Stephens’s explanation makes sense because it is inconceivable that the White House’s art experts would imagine Thomas’s painting was fraudulent or a copy...

Yesterday, the NYT ran a story about the White House acquiring art. It included a slide show of a dozen artworks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/arts/design/07borrow.html?_r=1 This Freeper took a look and found one abstract work he admired:"Watusi (Hard Edge)," by Alma Thomas, a longtime Washington resident who is an African-American painter. Photo: Gift of Vincent Melzac/Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. As I admired it, I thought it reminiscent, even derivative of a favorite artwork of mine by Matisse. I recall seeing that one decades ago at the Tate Gallery in London. A giant collage (about ten feet tall) from late in Matisse's life,...

A painting by the artist Alma W. Thomas, which had been selected to go on Michelle Obama's wall in her East Wing office, will no longer be mounted. "The reason why it was moved was because it didn't fit the space right," Semonti Stephens, the first lady's deputy press secretary, said of "Watusi (Hard Edge)," which had been borrowed from the Hirshhorn Museum. Stephens noted that the Obamas still "have a piece of [Thomas's] work in the residence. So they appreciate the artist's work." A Thomas artwork titled "Sky Light," also on loan from the Hirshhorn, hangs in the family's...

.SNIPARTnews has reported that the White House has quietly de-listed a painting by Alma W. Thomas that it chose last month, among some 45 pieces borrowed from several Washington museums, to decorate the private White House residence and the West and East Wings. Titled, “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from 1963, the work takes a Matisse collage and, as Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times, praising the selection, “shifts the pieces around, cools the colors down, and adds a title that refers to a Chubby Checker song.” “But through copying Matisse,” Mr. Cotter added, “she began to work out a...

<p>Every so often, actual breaking news is so absurd that parody is the only answer. After news of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize broke on Friday, the website, FreeRepublic.com was deluged by its members with Breaking News! parody posts.</p> <p>The faux headlines kept me giggling all day, and a few have already made it into my inbox via e-mails gone viral. Sometimes, ya just have to laugh.</p>

Larry King Live featured a long session with Ann Coulter and Kiki McLean Wednesday night.During the interview, King asked Coulter about the recent Saturday Night Live skit about Obama running through a check list of his failures as president and whether this was the beginning of a trend of media criticism of Obama.Ann said Michelle Obama would turn on Obama before Saturday Night Live would and that the skit was good fun.She then noted that websites like Free Republic were criticizing CNN for fact-checking the comedy skit.Check this link later for CNN's transcript of the show.

<p>Those who read the New York Times's coverage of the unsuccessful results of Barack and Michelle Obama's attempt to seal the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago on Friday afternoon ('For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign") might want to read it again.</p>

Silky, straight hair has long been considered by many black women to be their crowning glory. So what if getting that look meant enduring the itchy burning that's a hallmark of many chemical straighteners. Or a pricey dependence on "creamy crack," as relaxers are sometimes jokingly called. Getting "good hair" often means transforming one's tightly coiled roots; but it is also more freighted, for many African-American women, and some men, than simply a choice about grooming. Straightening hair has been perceived as a way to be more acceptable to certain relatives, as well as to the white establishment. "If your...

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3179840 As some of you may have noticed, recently the Republican Party has begun cracking down on the "birthers", realizing that openly supporting the most crazy members of your party is, well, problematic for appealing to non-crazy people. This, of course, leads to even more crazy, as they turn on their leaders for hiding the "truth". It's a drat shame to let all this crazy go to waste, when properly cultivated and raised it could be so much more. So welcome to the first FreeRepublic Infiltration Contest! We're going to infiltrate freerepublic as agents provocateur. This can take several forms;...

...The site is a venerable and storied Web forum for American arch-conservatives. Funded by member donations, it was founded in 1996 as an anti-Clinton grandstand, and soon became a place where members could post news stories and discuss them -- though "discussion" might be the wrong word. More often, it's a kind of pantomime, where the name of the game is to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy every time he creeps on stage...

<p>We are making a difference, maybe too much of a difference. We have been attacked by every blogger who wants to see his name in lights. Yet they can't even spell his name right.</p> <p>If you believe that Jim Robinson is a radical nutjob, if you believe all the bloggers jumping on the anti-Free Republic bandwaggon, please do not contribute to the fundraiser.</p>

The runner-up, Jim Thompson, the owner of the right wing website Free Republic, which has moderated comments, meaning a grown up is supposed to read them and delete the crazier ones. But Thompson‘s folks waited as long as three days removing a comment thread devoted to the racist rage of a disturbing large number of his posters, possibly some of the same people who had previously conducted polls on the site on how best to topple the freely elected government of the United States. After President Obama‘s daughter appeared in a t-shirt with a peace sign on it at the...

Jim Thompson, the creator and owner of Free Republic should be a bit upset with Crissie. At least Kieth Olbermann knows the real name of the owner of this site!From the re-write: The writer has a point," wrote site owner Jim Robinson sarcastically. "We should steer clear of Obama's children. They can't help it if their old man is an American-hating Marxist pig." "I agree Jim," wrote commenter, by the nickname NoobRep. "The kids didn't pick their commie pinko pansy of a father. Nor did they choose to be put into the spotlight... ***** One poster by the name of...

"To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds." Photo caption of Michelle Obama speaking to her daughter Malia posted on The Free Republic. Disclaimer on The Free Republic: "Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government. " For those of you who have argued vociferously with me that we are living in a "post-racial America" rather than an America in which Jim Crow is on steroids, you apparently have not read the daily diet of racism that the readers and bloggers on this site consume and then regurgitate....

We do not share this information to encourage people to engage in criminal acts against certain people or groups. There are other ways to handle them if one feels they need to, although it will depend on how one prefers to approach a situation. Some of the information may be very useful in a trial if any of the groups and/or individuals we are documenting are being sued or charged with a crime. We do recognize however that going to law enforcement is not a favorable approach for some people as law enforcement has had a history of oppression (and...

<p>If you tell the lie often enough people will believe it. The libs are going to tag this on us and who will stand in their way besides talk radio?</p>

The murder over the weekend of Dr. George Tiller, one of a handful of physicians who performed late-term abortion, is an absolute tragedy. As Kristen wrote yesterday, many are in mourning and angry over this disgusting and hate-filled act. This was an act of political aggression against a doctor who helped people who were in absolutely desperate circumstances: Anti-choice activists often cast late-term abortions as the murder of a viable baby at the whim of a woman who doesn't wish to be inconvenienced, carried out by a doctor who looks at her and sees only cartoon dollar signs. They're egged...

(Note: this report is a paraphrase based on memory, not tape. Any inaccuracies will be corrected down thread by me or other FReepers.)Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly responded on The Factor tonight to criticisms of his attacks last night on Free Republic and Hot Air by the sites' respective founders, Jim Robinson and Michelle Malkin. The segment last night was on reaction by right and left wing websites on the Judge Sotomayor nomination to the Supreme Court. Free Republic was singled out for an obnoxious comment about Sotomayor being diabetic. Hot Air was singled out for an impolitic strongly...

FOX News' Bill O'Reilly has been attacking the liberal blog Daily Kos, and liberal blogs in general, over some extreme comments left by some of our visitors. It's interesting therefore that O'Reilly's own Web site contains some of the most hideous hate you've ever seen. Over the next few hours, we'll be documenting some of that hate. And you'll be interested to know that while O'Reilly holds others responsible for the words strangers leave on their Web sites, on O'Reilly's Web site, he's not responsible at all for the hate and threats his readers leave behind. And I quote O'Reilly's...

Re: Your on-air bashing of Free Republic So, you think that because one poster on FR comments that a diabetic supreme court nominee might not live to a ripe old age that all 350,000 of us are insensitive right-wing loons? Got news for you pal. The owner of Free Republic (namely me) is diabetic and I've already lost one leg due to this despicable disease and the other leg looks like it's ready to fall off any day now. My sister died of complications brought on by juvenile diabetes at the tender age 43. I've out-lived her in years, but...

Anyone else just catch O'Reilly slur of Free Republic He quotes a post says that bama's nominee has diabetes and may not live as long as other recent judges on the SC He sure does like to bash FR!!

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not. A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds. They said they did not...

Freerepublic.com is going to get shut down by the Secret Service for threatening President Obama's life. If it doesn't happen because of a flimsy proviso in the post discussed here, then we live in a still more dangerous world.

I was listening to Bill O'Reilly's Radio Factor this afternoon, when lovely Freeper Ann Coulter came on the air for her book promotion interview (Guilty, by Ann Coulter). I was listening to the back-and-forth between the two when Ann interjected a plug for the Free Republic. We Freepers "get it" when it comes to the political stuff her books deal with, insists our brilliant Annie. I didn't realize till much later that she kept injecting her point about Free Republic till she got it through O'Reilly's subtle avoidances. Coulter was sticking it in O'Reilly's eye for her fellow members of...

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported an important effect of the 2008 presidential campaign: For the first time, traffic at left-leaning political Web sites overtook traffic at right-leaning competitors. The Drudge Report and Free Republic had the largest number of unique visitors in September 2007, but in September 2008, that honor went to the Huffington Post. Political strategists have been analyzing the impact of the Internet on American political communication since at least the mid-1990s.

A Democrat is poised to take the reins of power in Washington, D.C., and Fresno resident Jim Robinson is feeling a sense of deja vu. It was President Bill Clinton's 1992 election that sparked Robinson's political activism, driving him to create a Web site that made him a grass-roots leader among conservatives before Clinton's term was over. This year, as Barack Obama prepares to sweep into office on another tide of Democratic votes, Robinson and denizens of that Web site, freerepublic.com, are preparing to do battle again. "We'll double and redouble our efforts to fight for what is right," Robinson...

A Democrat is poised to take the reins of power in Washington, D.C., and Fresno resident Jim Robinson is feeling a sense of déjà vu. It was President Clinton's 1992 election that sparked Robinson's political activism, driving him to create a Web site that made him a grass-roots leader among conservatives before Clinton's term was over. This year, as Barack Obama prepares to sweep into office on another tide of Democratic votes, Robinson and denizens of that Web site, freerepublic.com, are preparing to do battle again. "We'll double and redouble our efforts to fight for what is right," Robinson says....

It certainly seems as though the right wing of the blogosphere will be kept quite busy over the next three-and-a-half weeks -- so little time, and so many Obama scandals to investigate!Over at National Review Online's blog, The Corner, Mark Hemmingway suspects -- based on, um, nothing -- that Tony Rezko may be telling the feds about nefarious dealings with a bank where Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias once worked. And we care because? Because Giannoulias has connections to Barack Obama! Hemmingway concludes: "Maybe there's nothing there, but it's worth looking into right?" Um, right. At American Thinker, Jack Cashill has another bombshell: he...

PBS is learning a hard lesson about conducting online polls relating to hot-button political issues. In early September, following coverage of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the television program NOW, the broadcaster launched an online poll asking viewers whether or not she was qualified for the office. A massive campaign to influence the poll soon ensued, with groups from both the right and the left vying to tip the scales for or against Palin. Blogs ratcheted up interest, with those on the right questioning the impartiality of PBS. A common theme: Why wasn't there a similar PBS poll...

(snip) Free Republic: It's not the prettiest site you'll ever visit, but if your news tastes run to the conservative side of things, you may quickly get accustomed to Free Republic's sharp daily aggregation of news and commentary on all the hot-button conservative stories and issues of the day. You can post your opinions in the site's active forums, too. (snip)

Much of Barack Obama's political success can be traced to a database listing contact information for millions of people, a tool that has proved invaluable in raising record sums of money and organizing a national volunteer network. Now Obama's presidential campaign is increasingly using the list to beat back media messages it does not like, calling on supporters to flood radio and television stations when those opposed to him run anti-Obama ads or appear on talk shows. It did so as recently as Monday night, when it orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned...

I'd like to welcome the Obama media and supporters who are visiting FreeRepublic.com thanks to the publication by the Obama campaign of Unfit for Publication.FreeRepublic.com is the most popular conservative news analysis and activism site on the web. It is the third most popular political website overall according to Hitwise.com. Not bad considering FreeRepublic.com has no advertising budget, relies solely on donations and is not promoted in the media like the two more popular sites on Hitwise: Huffington Post and Politico.FreeRepublic.com has been around for twelve years and, along with the Drudge Report, has helped revolutionize politics on the Internet.Over...

As you know, I call Washington, DC everyday (every weekday) and I even started to do a radio show each Friday to share with folks the responses that I get. This week I called Senator Obama's office about the Global Poverty Act, and all 23 of the cosponsors- some of them 2 and 3 times. Well, on Thursday, my focus changed. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives held a vote on weather or not they would stay and debate the energy issue, or go on their scheduled vacations. In this vote, 17 Democrats sided with ALL the Republicans and voted...

The Media Mob has learned that a team of Hollywood insiders is currently working on a screen adaptation of Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power—the 2005 book by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, in which she defends the 60 Minutes II story by Dan Rather about President George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, which ran on CBS in September 2004 and eventually led to her ouster from the network. Who would want to turn "Rathergate" into a feature-length film? According to sources familiar with the situation, Producer Mikkel Bondesen,...

While all the military services are concerned about operational security and compromising the mission, each branch has its own rules for servicemembers who want to sound off in the blogosphere. Army An April 2007 operational security policy mandated that soldier blogs get "eyes on" by a blogger’s immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer before publication. The policy also covered (but was not limited to) "letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail, Web site postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation." The free-speech firestorm was fast and furious, and the Army...

SHE is known to be a brilliant war reporter, one of America's hottest TV journalists. But it was not her reporting that made her page one news for New York's tabloids. Sexy Lara Logan who had been reporting from dangerous Baghdad has been labelled a homewrecker for her tryst with an Aussie newsman and the husband of a US embassy worker. According to the New York Post, the 60 Minutes reporter and former swimsuit model apparently courted two men which led to a brawl. One of her lovers, MrJoe Burkett is an American civilian contractor. He reportedly brawled in a...

Beckwith responds to The Washington Post. The first thing I have to say about "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," published by The Washington Post on June 28th, is that at NO time was I ever contacted by this woman, Danielle Allen.  I spoke to two male Post reporters, who spoke to me over the phone for a period of months.  The first contact was in the fall of 2007.  They told me they were trying to track down the source of emails they considered negative to the Obamamessiah. Allen obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers...