Free Republic

The Internet giant AOL libeled Free Republic as "hosting child pornography" in an article published Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at their Daily Finance news site. The site's masthead reads: Daily Finance An AOL Money & Finance Site.Authored by Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici, the article entitled Muzzled Reporter Says 'Maw of Yahoo' No Place for Journalism tells the story about John Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News and returning to his previous gig with Gawker. According to the article, Cook was the senior national affairs reporter for Yahoo's The Upshot news blog. Bercovici notes that he and Cook are...

The AOL-owned site Daily Finance this morning retracted a passage in an article that falsely stated Free Republic hosted child pornography.The article was about reporter John Cook leaving Yahoo News to return to Gawker. Included in Cook's reasons for leaving, according to Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici, was that Yahoo would not allow him to write about Free Republic "hosting child pornography." The Salon.com article that was linked to support that claim actually stated that Free Republic did not host child pornography.The offending Daily Finance passage now reads:"... On similar grounds, he was prohibited from writing about the conservative website...

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...

<p>In the wake of Glenn Beck's hugely successful Restoring Honor rally held in Washington, D.C. this weekend, the Huffington Post has published an offer of $100,000 to anyone with evidence that would destroy Beck's reputation and take him off the political/cultural battlefield.</p>

Friend - With Congress's August recess now under way, Republican members of Congress are starting to show up at Tea Party events and campaign rallies all over the country. We saw last year during the fight for health reform that this is a time when the extremists run rampant. Remember "death panels?" This year, Republicans are looking to have it both ways, trying to appeal to independent voters while making promises to the Tea Party crowd to pursue an extreme right-wing agenda if they regain control of Congress. Who knows what's being said when the cameras aren't running? We don't...

The Democratic National Committee is seeking “Macaca” moments. The party today is opening a website, www.accountabilityproject.com, designed to recruit and display embarrassing audio and video of Republican candidates, as well as information about their schedules and copies of their mailers. Campaigns have long made videotapes of each other, using “trackers” who follow the opposition from event to event. It was a young tracker who shot the video footage of then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) that wound up sinking his campaign. The DNC hopes campaigns and journalists will use the footage in ads and news coverage. The site targets both 2010 candidates...

In connection with the breaking news out of South Korea, here is a Korean language map from South Korean daily conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo, showing the land and air routes the potential assassins (two males; highly trained) took from North Korea under orders from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, until they were arrested in the South. Will post other breaking news as it comes in. No photographs have emerged yet of the two arrested and or whether weaponry was found on their persons.

Bakersfield - -- The state senator who represents this Bible Belt region of farms and oil fields was once best known for moments like the one he created on April 2, 2005. Organizing a rally at Bakersfield's Patriots Park, Roy Ashburn stood with evangelical leaders to condemn same-sex marriage as gay-rights advocates shouted him down."Marriage between one man and one woman is fundamental to civilization," Ashburn said that day.Now, after a drunken driving arrest near a gay bar in Sacramento forced Ashburn to reveal that he is homosexual, people in his district - including some who were at Patriots Park...

Sarah Palin's campaign against the derogatory usage of the word "retard" collided with her campaign to maintain her popularity with conservatives today, with confusing results. A Palin spokeswoman seemed to back away from earlier criticism of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Yesterday, when asked for comment on Limbaugh's use of the "r" word in a recent broadcast, Palin spokeswoman told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, "Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name-calling at the expense of others is disrespectful." Today, Stapleton claims the statement was meant generally and she was not specifically referring to Limbaugh. Still, she declined to...

Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their electoral woes — and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez is working hard to make sure it’s not him. Showing that they’ve learned the lesson of Massachusetts, Menendez and his staff will distribute a memo Tuesday advising Democratic campaign managers to frame their opponents early — and to drive a wedge between moderate voters and tea-party-style conservatives. “Given the pressure Republican candidates feel from the extreme right in their party, there is a critical — yet time-sensitive — opportunity for Democratic candidates,” the DSCC writes. “We have a finite window...

LONDON Newly apppointed Mossad chief Meir Dagan is planning to reactivate a special operations unit, code named Caesarea, to target the commanders, controllers, and financiers of terrorist groups throughout the Middle East, the London Sunday Times reports. Quoting sources close to the Mossad, the paper said Islamic extremists abroad will become as vulnerable as those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "There is no reason why we should not do the same abroad. They will have nowhere to hide," said one source who is said to be familiar with Dagan's plans for the Mossad. "Gone are the days of...

Seven New Orleans police officers fired their weapons at a 22-year-old man who was killed early Thursday while sitting in a car outside his grandmother's house, Superintendent Warren Riley said Saturday. The seven were among nine officers reassigned in the wake of the fatal shooting.Riley said Adolph Grimes III sparked a "gunbattle" with officers when he fired at an unmarked police vehicle that pulled up next to his car. The officers, who were involved in undercover patrols, were wearing street clothes. Grimes died in the shooting near North Claiborne Avenue and Gov. Nicholls Street.Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard said Grimes...

Anybody remember Jack Ryan? Welcome to the thuggocracy!

So, Kathleen Willey writes a book about how she was attacked by the Clinton machine when she was forced to testify about his sexual predatory behavior. I put up a post about it, with (what I thought was) a link to an interview of her. A commenter (anonymous, other than a first name) shows up and implies that she's lying about her book manuscript being stolen (i.e., slandering her and besmirching her character). I challenged the commenter to go actually follow the link, and read the interview. (S)he said that (s)he had done both. Funny thing, though. It turns out...

Remember when Congressman Charles Rangel introduced a proposal in 2003 to re-instate the draft? When it came to a vote, Rangel voted AGAINST his own draft bill. If you thought Rangel's draft proposal was nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt, you would not be wrong. Of course, Rangel was in the minority party back then. However, now that the Democrats are in the majority in Congress, Rangel has proposed the SAME cheap publicity stunt over the draft again only to be slapped down by Nancy Pelosi who publicly nixed the idea. Keep in mind that Charles Rangel is...

SYDNEY (AFP) - A former Chinese diplomat who defected to Australia has charged that Beijing has sent a hit squad to kill him, but Canberra said the claim should be treated with caution. Chen Yonglin, 37, who was last month granted a permanent protection visa after abandoning his post at the Chinese consulate-general in Sydney in late May, told ABC television a friend had warned him that assassins were on his trail. "I receive a message from one of my closest friends in China, working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying that the government has sent -- one month...

Doctors at the Austrian clinic that treated Ukraine’s opposition leader confirm there was a plot to kill him MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday. Doctors at Vienna’s exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Mr Yushchenko’s face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Nikolai Korpan told The Times in a telephone interview. Specialists in Britain, the United States and France had helped to establish that it was a biological...

New York Junior Senator Hillary Rodham Cliton has become deeply involved in assembling and raising money for an orginization designed to provide a voice to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The group is said to be a 501(c)3 non for profit or 501(c)4 aimed at 'countering the efforts of the political right wing in terms of reasearch and policy development as well as communications outreach,' according to a source.One observer said that the entity could become both a 501(c)3 functioning as a Democratic think tank and 501(c)4 as a rapid research and response outlet.A democrat strategist, who described...

A man accused of using a website to offer training to would-be terrorists has died in a London hospital under mysterious circumstances. Friends and family believe Sulayman Zain-ul-abidin was murdered in his hospital bed as he recovered from a routine knee surgery. Those suspecting foul play, say the Muslim convert could even be the first victim of a CIA hit squad sent to Britain to "eliminate" terrorist suspects. The American agents who are licensed to kill, are under orders to "track, hunt and eliminate" Al Qaeda suspects as part of President George W Bush's War on Terrorism. Now questions are...