Free Republic

The popular Pittsburgh blogger formerly known only as PittGirl said she was fired from her job today, one day after she revealed her identity. "As I feared would happen, I am no longer working at NEED," a college access program for minorities, wrote Virginia Montanez, 35, on her new blog, thatschurch.com. ~~~SNIP~~~ "Listen. It's okay," Montanez wrote today about losing her job. "NEED is a wonderful organization doing what it needs to do, look after its rich history and stellar reputation. They don't need me there as a distraction." Montanez started Burgh Blog in 2005, often posting critical comments about...

US courts have generally been pretty good at protecting the anonymity of online speech from forced exposure -- in fact, as we're posting this story, we've come across yet another ruling protecting anonymous speech online. However, every so often a judge goes in the other direction. Earlier this year, we wrote about a case involving a model, Liskula Cohen, who was so upset about a blog that had a grand total of four posts insulting her, that she filed a lawsuit to uncover the anonymous blogger, claiming that it was defamatory to call her a "skank." Of course, most of...

As you may have heard, there is among certain people a controversy as whether Barack Obama was really born in the United States.

An attorney for Sarah Palin has delivered a letter threatening legal action against an anti-Palin blogger who was the source of a divorce rumor that the attorney for the former Alaska governor called "categorically false." Publication of the letter at a Web site that repeated the rumor has uncovered circumstantial evidence that the anti-Palin blogger "Gryphen" is a kindergarten teacher at an Anchorage elementary school.... CNN stringer/anti-Palin blogger Dennis Zaki published ... a copy of a letter from Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein, ordering "Gryphen" to retract the allegations -- calling them "complete fabrications, false and defamatory" -- or face...

Liberal blogger Mike Stark filmed an online video that portrayed eleven Republican members of Congress as being evasive when asked whether or not they believe President Obama is an American citizen. In it, Stark attempted to prove that Republican politicians are held hostage by conservative conspiracy theorists who believe Obama's certificate of birth is invalid, and is thus unqualified to be President. The video received wide attention, and was seen to be a smoking gun by critics who relish in ridiculing what they have titled the "birther" conspiracy movement. A closer look at the video reveals that much of the...

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...

http://theobamaforum.com/

BAGHDAD — Army family member Katie Glenn has created a cool way for kids of deployed military personnel to express their feelings about their parent being away or who have lost a parent from the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. With the assistance of Families United, a non-profit organization, Glenn created www.militarykidsblog.com . She said she got the idea after taking a “new media” course at American University in Washington, D.C., where she is a senior.“I read a lot of articles on how political campaigns, charities and social activism organizations were learning to use new forms of media like Twitter,...

<p>I'm scheduled to be on MSNBC this afternoon to talk about the controversy over the pulled Free Republic thread about Malia Obama.</p> <p>The segment should air live around 3:30 p.m. EDT barring any breaking news, etc.</p> <p>David Shuster and Tamran Hall will be co-hosting the segment.</p>

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...

Media types often have a habit of masking their true beliefs in their online blogs in attempt to maintain the fiction that they are "unbiased." One such blog that comes to mind is the Daily Nightly blog of Brian Williams in which he attempts (not always successfully) to hide his liberal bias to an extent that it comes off as quite inane. In fact, your humble correspondent has labeled the Williams blog as the Daily Dully. In stark contrast to the Williams ennui is the new John Stossel blog of ABC News, John Stossel's Take, which began less than two...

Bloggers updating from inside Iran: http://crowdstatus.com/iranelectioncrowd.aspx

JAILED music legend Phil Spector has posted a string of astonishing internet blogs before and after being sentenced to 19 years for murder. The producer, who has been allowed to keep a laptop computer and iPod in his cell at Los Angeles County Jail, has been rattling off revealing messages via the chat site Twitter. In them, Spector, 69, who was convicted by a retrial jury last month for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, tells how: The authorities took his wig; He has befriended a cockroach – “I’m naming him Wilson” – and is playing air chess with him;...

Pundit Tucker Carlson publicly announced Tuesday that a right-leaning news site resembling the Huffington Post he's been planning will go live within weeks. Carlson will launch TheDailyCaller.com, which he said would focus on reporting on the Obama administration and "adding facts to the conversation." "We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on." Carlson, a former conservative and libertarian pundit (most notably on CNN), touted his site as a home for basic reporting. "Tell the truth, and...

I added the question mark to be on the safe side but there’s really no doubt about it. Josh Marshall, writing at TPM on Thursday: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq. And Dowd, today: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the...

Since the landmark 2008 ruling in DC v. Heller, the courts have recognized what we have always known, namely that the right to keep and bear arms is a specifically enumerated, individual right, on par with freedom of speech and religion. Given this judicial environment, if we allow the government to impose a prior restraint upon the 2nd Amendment, then the 1st is no longer inviolate.

Conservative strategic visionary Andrew Breitbart hits the target again. In his Washington Times op-ed today the Internet news entrepreneur warns of the apparently coordinated proliferation of left-wing, pro-Obama Internet trolls out to stifle dissent and demoralize conservatives:

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power. We must not let that go unanswered. Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George...

The Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of Nancy) documentary, "Right America: Feeling Wronged," premeried on HBO last night. One word perfectly describes it: "tedious." Over and over and over again, Pelosi tries to hammer home the point that conservatives are angry because they just don't know what is best for them. And what is best is Obama...at least in Pelosi's opinion. Overall, her documentary offers very little insight except for the fact that Pelosi thinks socialism is misunderstood by the "unenlightened" yahoos. However, a Salon.Com interview with her about the documentary reveals quite a lot of insight into the incredible elitism of...

The Finalists are: India Uncut Savage Politics Truthdig Foreign Policy Watch Thurber's Thoughts No Quarter From the Left American Thinker Pajama Pundit The Hook FiveThirtyEight Townhall Daily Kos Politico Polls close Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 10:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is 5:00 p.m. (EST) and 2:00 p.m. (PST).