“This is not and likely won’t be limited to Verizon or Firefox. The challenge is that the Internet has gone to secured SSL websites (HTTPS) and Free Republic is unsecured (HTTP). It is increasingly required that website are secured over the past several years and now browsers, not Verizon, are enforcing this.”
really?
the very page you posted that on says:
https://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=3855222%2C7
HTTPS ...
You have to actively choose HTTP or HTTPS as the FreeRepublic website is not yet configured to automatically resolve both choices to HTTPS. Yes, I use HTTP but if you haven’t actively chosen that, you may be using an old URL link or bookmark that uses HTTP. Once FreeRepublic’s configuration is updated to automatically resolve or redirect to HTTPS then it won’t be an issue for anyone.