Free Republic

Been getting a ton of mail about my column of last week. My main point: "All the posturing about illegal immigrants is really an attack aimed at everybody whose name ends in 'ez.'"Snip....What really caught my attention was his link to a forum at FreeRepublic.com where my column was being, umm, discussed. One posting had the same bandito featured on Ralph's Mexifornia license (turns out it's the actor Alfonso Bedoya in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre") and said: "Borders? Borders? We don' need no steenking borders. We don't need no steekin' Roger Hernandez neither!"

FORT WORTH, Texas — Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, says she's done being the public face of the movement. "I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California. "I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she said. In what she described as a "resignation letter," Sheehan wrote in her...

The Howard Dean-Kathleen Sebelius-Kansas tornado story has taken an interesting turn. Scott Johnson at Power Line reported Saturday that attorneys representing the Democratic National Committee have sent a cease and desist letter to Free Republic due to a post at its website --snip-- As an interesting sidebar, the folks at Free Republic don't seem too concerned with Sandler's letter, for the post in question is still available.

From Lorne Gunter's "AS I PLEASE" blog on the National Post's website: Thanks, Lorne! Oh, please, Stephane, grow up Comes the latest manufactured outrage from the furtive minds of the Liberal opposition: Stephen Harper is being mean to us. Lately, all the Liberals seems to be able to do is manufacture outrage. They were outraged when the Conservatives ran television ads depicting their leader, Stephane Dion, as weak and indecisive. They were incensed when the Conservatives altered the committees that advise the justice minister on which lawyers might make good judges, charging that the committees were being "stacked" with social-conservative...

The Dixie Chicks have a movie, Shut Up & Sing, coming out today, and, to keep things lively, they're staging a grudge match with the worst site on the Internet, political-rhetoric division. "The fat chick will only drive traffic to this site," writes one poster to the site. "The Frenchy Chix can't get a gig in a gay bar in Ithaca," writes another. Others chime in with more corruptions: Chubby Chicks, Ditsy Twits, Vichy Chicks. "Yep typical liberals," says someone else. "No character." This is Free Republic, an exercise in political extremism that, despite being and something of an anthropological...

A famous hunter and outdoorsman recently voiced misgivings about people who use assault rifles to kill prairie dogs. “Assault rifle” is a much touchier term. It is generally understood to be the kind of gun that soldiers use in wars and terrorists use on the evening news. But the gun lobby despises “assault rifle,” considering it a false, scary label tacked onto perfectly legitimate weapons by people who want to take away others’ rights. That is a debate for another day. “Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist,” he wrote, “but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting...

The Web is a great way to deliver information, but it's also a great way to expose, spread, or jump-start a scandal. SNIP The Net's biggest scandals are nothing if not democratic, touching everyone from the most ordinary individuals to the highest office in the land. Not everyone deserved the notoriety. Some were hapless victims of privacy breaches; others were exposed by hackers or misguided crusaders. But in almost every case, somebody ended up getting fired, sued, or mortally embarrassed. SNIP 3. Dan Rather Bids a Font Farewell They were supposed to be the smoking gun the Bush Administration was...

Hey, everyone. Capone in the Windy City here in an interviewing frenzy, and there’s still more to come. It may surprise you to hear me say this, but the Dixie Chicks documentary SHUT UP & SING might be the hands-down finest doc of the year. Two years ago, I begged people to go see METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER, a superb film about a band I couldn’t have cared less about before the film in crisis. And everyone who saw it took it to heart. SHUT UP & SING has a similar appeal, with the small exception that this film...

When I wrote last week about the death of former Enron founder Ken Lay and the judge's decision that made his fraud and perjury convictions disappear, I was totally unprepared for what would follow.

FLASH!!! Dixie Chicks Natalie Manes just now blamed the Free Republic for their downfall on "Hardball." She claims the FR had an organized effort to bring them down.

SNIPOscar-winning doc filmmaker Barbara Kopple ("Harlan County USA," "American Dream") teamed up with collaborator Cecilia Peck to co-direct a behind the scenes look at the best-selling female group of all time, "The Dixie Chicks." The film, "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" was initially envisioned as a much more modest project, according to the band's Natalie Maines who spoke at a press conference this week at the Toronto International Film Festival. "We originally thought of having a filmmaker [to capture footage] for ourselves or as a supplement to some concert DVD release," said Maines. But Maines' now famous off-handed comment...

Just wanted to send a note and say hey and tell you about one of the darnedest things. And I gotta say it is one of the clearest examples of how CONservatives (not to be confused with honest conservatives) have managed to convince so many people so many lies are in fact the truth. This is indeed a rather mind numbing stor ... eh ... no ... actually it's what I'd expect. So here's what happened, Droppings: Somebody with the screen name of "presidio9" picked up my piece Green diets vs. global warming and posted it on the Internet message...

Greetings, Today on O'Gasbag, Ellis Henican stated that (after listening to Lynn Samuels audio that O'Gasbag played)there were "whacks" on both sides of the political spectrum - he said that while O'Gasbag only cites left-wing whacks, he would cite "Newsmax, Free Republic, and other far right" whackjobs... Just throwing the handgrenade into the living room...

Click the link below to access a video that lasts about 5 minutes of Janeane Garofalo and some Metrosexual zot bait (that visits FR frequently) give their opinion of what goes on at FR and what FReepers are all about!! Click Here then click the image of Jeanine Garafalo!

A Waterloo man and his dog made a harrowing escape from the clutches of a vicious black bear Thursday while portaging near Wawa, Ont. Tom Tilley, 55, killed the nearly 200-pound bear by jumping on its back and stabbing the aggressive animal with a six-inch hunting knife after his dog alerted him and distracted the bear. "Love is a very powerful emotion and my thought right away was, 'You're not going to kill my dog,' " Tilley said yesterday. "I really consider my dog a hero. Without that first warning I would have had the bear clamping down on my...

Message to IMDb users: freerepublic.com members are posting here by - arthurs-1 4 minutes ago (Sat Jan 14 2006 18:06:19 ) Ignore this User | Report Abuse -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Folks, there's a right-wing website popular with right-wing troglodytes called freerepublic.com. These troggies are bizarre conspiracy theorists who spend their time whining about what other people do in their private lives, especially gays. A lot of the "freepers", as they call themselves, are actually closet bisexual or gay men who have grown to loathe themselves for the fact that they haven't been honest with their own lives. Just be aware.that they are...

WASHINGTON, March 27 — American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion. But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government. Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops. Less than two weeks into the project, and with only 600 out of possibly a...

Saddam planned to deploy 'camels of mass destruction' By James Langton (Filed: 26/03/2006) Saddam Hussein planned to use "camels of mass destruction" as weapons to defend Iraq, loading them with bombs and directing them towards invading forces. The animals were part of a plan to arm and equip foreign insurgents drawn up by the dictator shortly before the American-led invasion three years ago, reveals a 37-page report, captured after the fall of Baghdad and just released by the Pentagon. It is part of a cache of thousands of documents that the United States Department of Defence says it does not...

This might be the first time Freepers and Kossacks have agreed on anything. From the conservative website Free Republic to the liberal Daily Kos, Internet users of all ideologies are uniting in opposition to federal regulation of political blogs. As early as this afternoon, the Federal Election Commission will publish regulations that, for the first time, could put limits on what bloggers can do and say in support of political candidates. The FEC is trying to define the line between offering political opinions and operating as part of a political campaign. The full commission is expected to vote Thursday on...

Whose children will be allowed to participate in the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll on April 17? Not the sons and daughters of gay parents, if the Christian right gets its way. In November, when the Family Pride Coalition, a D.C.-based gay rights advocacy group, invited its members to participate in one of the “great traditions of our country” the religious right sprang into action. The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a religious think tank, accused the Family Pride Coalition of trying to “exploit a children’s event for political purposes.” Even the White House has weighed in. ~~snip~~ The...

November 09, 2005 Mary Mapes Names Names ("Anonymous" Ones) Posted by Bill An excerpt from page 201 of her new book: Within minutes of Buckhead's original posting, Freepers began to repeat and embellish Buckhead's thoughts. Not surprisingly, they all agreed with him, they all agreed with one another, and they all agreed this should be pursued aggressively. Freethinkers they are not. The Freepers and their lockstep like-minded fellow travelers moved as a group, like a school of sharks sweeping toward an unaware and unarmed victim. CBS was like some sunburned, overweight Florida tourist with a cut foot, floundering and flapping...

Newspaper Reveals Logging Into Internet User's Account BALTIMORE -- The identity of an Internet user connected to the firing of a former gubernatorial aide remains a mystery. However, new disclosures from The Washington Post may shed light on how to solve the mystery. The editor said that information came from someone associated with MD4Bush and that the reporter used it to log into MD4Bush's account several times before the story was published.

Here's the post exactly as it appears on www.mtstars.com, politics, liberal board: "If this board is a *freeping* example, these *freepers* must be R-I-C-H!! This was posted on the Maher board about an hour ago. The freeper truth- revealed! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Absolutley hilarious. And true, i kid you not. Turns out a good friend of mine- one with whom i often disagree, but remain friends with neverthless- told me he is actually a paid freeper for the right. I have long thought it was just a rumor, but he actually spelled out the so called mandate of these individuals for me:...

October 5, 2005 -- THE producer at the center of last year's "Memogate" scandal at CBS News says she was derailed by a vast right-wing conspiracy. The producer, Mary Mapes, is one of four CBS staffers fired last January in the wake of the scandal. She is convinced she was the victim of a group of loosely associated Internet bloggers "with a harsh political bent" who pounced on CBS News minutes after the airing of the now-infamous Texas Air National Guard story on "60 Minutes 2" in September 2004... "Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Websites I had...

Byron York of The National Review had a great article yesterday about the devolution of the MoveOn Katrina Victims protest at the White House.Dana Milbank of the Washington Post also wrote about MoveOn's troubled demonstration.However, apparently both these fine observers of the scene had departed when the worst part of the MoveOn protest happened.As Angelwood and I stood talking and debating with malingering MoveOn protesters, a man standing about twenty or thirty feet away from us was giving an interview with an independent D.C. journalist.I recognized the man as a long time liberal activist from Florida whom we had first...

Wikipedia overtaking major news sites Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year. September 6, 2005: 5:21 PM EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events. Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year, according to research firm Hitwise. At current growth rates, it is set to overtake The New York Times on the...

Contest may not be clear of 'freep' Posted: Aug. 22, 2005 Inside TV & Radio Among the terms born on the Internet is the verb freep. It comes from the righty Web site www.freerepublic.com, whose denizens, "freepers," rally comrades to flood an online survey to shift it in a specific direction. Freeping is one of the reasons Internet surveys are useless as a gauge of public opinion because the results can reflect an organized campaign. Now some conservative talk radio listeners, egged on by conservative blogs and radio talkers, are suggesting that the Internet competition to pick the new morning...

Gaggle is a daily comic strip at NewsBusters.org that deals with the White House press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican. Click here for previous strips.

Posted on 03/08/2004 4:00:56 PM EST by Jim Robinson (This is a Google translated excerpt from a Spiegel article regarding Freeping) Vote vote-pfuscher You need tons click "co-ordinating" Of franc Patalong Votes are a fine thing, the butter on message bread. They give a feedback to the on-line Medienmacher, how the reader sees a thing. George W. Bush regard nearly 60 per cent of the readers of MIRROR ON-line ONE for example as a Top president. We know also, why. From the guidance for the falsification of the Mirror On-line Votes: "You need tons cklick ' co-ordinating!'" The widow Vivian...

Conservatism in the English-speaking world has gotten a bad rap for the last, oh, say, 200 years. Ever since the Romantics decided that real artists needed to shatter society's conventions for the sake of shattering them and essentially thumb their noses at time-honored customs and morals, most anyone claiming to be hip, edgy or just plain cool has been assumed be a liberal. In other words, the nose-ring crowd is on the Left, and those complacent, hypocritical, SUV-driving, suburban-living, bourgeois stuffed-shirts get shunted onto the Right. The Clinton years only highlighted and deepened this divide. Despite the fact that most ...

Attn DC Freepers: On the FRONT PAGE of today's business section, there is an article..."Big News Media Join in Push to Limit Use of Unidentified Sources" ( an excellent article, BTW..I did a search and it hasn't been posted as yet..can someone please do so?) there is a pic which I am positive is of the DC Freepers protesting a few days ago. I recognize the sign.."Newsweek Lied/ People Died"

Why do we need Mother's Day anyway? Just kidding! I'm staying away from controversial topics for a while. For starters, I don't have time to read all the responses. In my last column, I questioned the need for taxpayer-funded libraries, considering that books are readily available at low prices from private sources such as Amazon.com. You could say the column did not receive overwhelming approval. In fact, for the next 2½ weeks, my computer continually flashed at me: "You have mail!" It might as well have said: "Another angry librarian!" Many of the replies were long and detailed. I almost...

MSNBC has invited me to represent FR on Connected Coast to Coast with Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley today to discuss the nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations.The segment should air live between 5 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. EDT, barring any breaking news that might bump the discussion.With the Free Republic poll showing 92% of FReepers supporting his nomination, I thinks it's safe to represent FR as being in favor of his confirmation.Feel free to add any points, preferably with supporting links, to help with the discussion.I'll be heading over to the studio around 4:30,...

GRAND ISLAND, N.Y. (AP) - An elementary school bus driver was fired after sharing a statistic she had read about embryonic stem cell research with students, then encouraging them to tell their parents about it.

Courtesy of Newsweek, mainstream media’s pet blogger Wonkette takes a cute little slap at the bloggers who broke the Dan Rather fraud story: Fast Chat: The Wonkette. What did you think of the bloggers’ role in the Dan Rather affair?I think they did a disservice to the debate because they made the debate about the documents and not about the president of the United States. There was another half to that story that had to do with verifiable events of what Bush may have been up to. While blogs like LGF were doing a “disservice to the debate” by exposing...

Union Thug (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-02-04 09:40 AM Original message Barf... I actually saw a personalized license plate that said.... "FREEPER" on the trunk lid was a jesus fish. This was in Issaquah, Wa. during the rush home at about 5pm yesterday. I didn't know whether to go into a berserker rage or run quickly away to avoid exposure and possible lethal levels of contamination. It was truly disturbing. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2126582

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his rock 'n' roll band, Capitol Offense, will headline the Jan. 20 inaugural ball hosted by Free Republic, a grass-roots conservative news, analysis and activism forum, in Washington. It's a repeat performance for the 49-year-old Mr. Huckabee, whose gubernatorial term expires in 2007. Because of the high-spirited show put on by his band at the 2001 Free Republic Inaugural Ball and Count the White House Silverware Party, guests left other inaugural balls in favor of the governor's less-formal gig, which, this year, honors the U.S. armed forces.

PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release FreeRepublic.com Pajama Patrol Badge For Details, contact: Gene McDonald www.0cents.com 702-365-0625 genemcdonald@0cents.com Las Vegas, NV --------- December 1, 2004 Dan Rather/CBS's attempt to influence the election through the use of fraudulent documents was exposed on www.FreeRepublic.com, the internet's premier conservative news forum. Within minutes of Rather's "news" broadcast, members of Free Republic started to dissect the story. Freepers Buckhead & TankerKC led the charge and quickly uncovered the bogus charges that the network was leveling against President Bush. The spinning and stonewalling began immediately with a former executive Vice President of CBS news, Jonathan...

Hoo-boy. It's a hot time in the old blogtown. The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's announcement on Tuesday that he was retiring as the top talking face of the network after 24 years. "This has been a simply outstanding month," crowed a poster on http://www.freerepublic.com. "Bush won, Arafat died, we're kicking ass in Fallujah, and now this!" Typically, the above-quoted "Freeper" didn't get that Rather may be down, but he certainly isn't out. When he steps down as front man for The CBS Evening News on March 9, he...

Free Republic has been credited by Time Magazine as having the Best Blog Scoop during Election '04. On page 23 of the latest Time Magazine issue, dated November 15, 2004, in the Notebook section there is a photo of John Kerry in his NASA Bunny suit. Just below this photo, there is a headline that says, "Best Blog Scoop". It reads;"FreeRepublic.com is the first to claim that the documents obtained by CBS News regarding Bush's National Guard service were most likely faked." Kudos to the Pajamahedeen at FR and big one to Buckhead!

Horlick voter drive will proceed By Phyllis Sides RACINE - Horlick High School students will still help get out the vote next week, despite the decision to pull the plug on a similar program in Milwaukee. Jose Martinez, Racine Unified's assistant superintendent for secondary education, said students' efforts are part of a service learning project that is nonpartisan. The participating students are part of social studies classes that have been studying presidential elections and the democratic process. Students will spend the entire school day Tuesday going door-to-door, in all of the city's 35 wards, providing information on how people can...

RACINE - The get out the vote project planned by Horlick High School students has been canceled. Racine Unified School District Superintendent Thomas Hicks said what started out to be a class-related activity last week turned out to be a partisan event. The decision to cancel the event was made Monday morning after he learned the facts had changed and it was no longer a bipartisan endeavor. "At one point it appeared it was going to be bipartisan and reach out to all of the community. But some groups decided they didn't want be part of it. Not everyone was...

[...] The right-wing echo chamber Free Republic, where private citizens spit pseudonymous venom, is also a rich treasure trove of nastiness. In late 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Court voted to allow marriage rights for same-sex couples, the Freepers went off: "This is great that Massachusett's gay judges did this. Let all the fudgepackers move there and be clients of the Dickem and Dunkem (Ted Kennedy) law firm," wrote a poster named "Therapist." "Can I marry my mule?" asked another. Another responded: "Sorry. Next step is to give them your boys. They want the age of consent lowered to around...

Main "Fringe"

· You will recall that the Diary's very own brand new conspiracy theory (which held that Kerry's tanking presidential campaign was a deliberate Democratic feint aimed at giving Hillary Clinton a clear run in 2008) was rather anticipated by those crazy rightwing nerds at freerepublic.com, who had already posted several threads to that effect before we could bestir ourselves to come up with a username and password. In fact, much of the internet-friendly hard right seems to believe that Hillary is working diligently for a Bush victory by supplying the Kerry campaign with forged documents. You have to get up...

Tons of new sign-ups and Lurkers due to FR publicity from Dan Rather/CBS Fontgate scandal. Welcome one and all! A couple of links for our new friends:Posting Guidelines about Replies, Articles and HTML Way too many duplicates and vanities. (Welcome Newbies) A Must Read!There's a FReeper terms definition thread around here somewhere but I couldn't find it....I'm sure it'll get posted below.

NEW YORK -- Yesterday, Goliath CBS News was delivered a smooth stone to the forehead by a FReeper. A poster in the FreeRepublic.com conservative news forum mentioned something peculiar about two documents CBS’s 60 Minutes claimed on September 8 were generated by now deceased Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian regarding an allegedly National Guard-evading George W. Bush in 1973. Within minutes following the broadcast, FReeper "TankerKC" wrote this to FReeper "Howlin'": WE NEED TO SEE THOSE MEMOS AGAIN! {snip] Since then, news of the potential forgery glitch spread like wildfire from blog to blog and into the mainstream press -...

Excerpts.... The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race. But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue...

<p>September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush. What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.</p>

FReeper and co-author of 'Unfit for Command' Jerome R. Corsi, PhD is being attacked on WashingtonMonthly and MediaMatters. From WashingtonMonthly: LUNATICS?....A few misguided souls took issue with my cavalier dismissal of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as "certifiable lunatics" yesterday. If you're one of them, I have two words for you: click here. It turns out I was being too kind.... That leads to this MediaMatters page: While much has been written about the identity and history of John E. O'Neill -- one of the authors of the forthcoming Regnery book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against...