Free Republic

All FReepers and lurkers in good standing are invited to join Jim Robinson and the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com in Washington, D.C. this September to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Free Republic.The celebration will be held as part of Support the Troops and Their Mission Weekend, September 22-23, which will feature a rally at the Washington Monument.The rally will be held Saturday, September 23rd from noon to 3 p.m. at the Sylvan Theater on the grounds of the Washington Monument, 15th Street and Independence Avenue, SW. (NOTE: Slightly different location than previously announced.After the rally, a private party for Freepers...

Former White House reporter and alleged male escort Jeff Gannon came to town on Thursday to address the Log Cabin Republican club's monthly meeting---and he took no prisoners, The Post's Robert George reports. Openly gay Gannon, a k a James Guckert, quit his job with the now-defunct conservative Talon News Web site last year after his fake name, slender journalism background and escort connections came to light.

Did you know that we had a military coup last Friday? If you blinked your eyes you might have missed it. However, DUmmie LeftHander was perceptive enough to spot that elusive military coup as you can see in his THREAD titled, "U.S. Military Coup happened today - BushCo is Toast." I made fun of DUmmie Steve2470 for merely speculating, Would the military intervene to save us? DUmmie LeftHander has gone him one further by stating that the military coup has already happened but we just didn't notice it. Upon what does DUmmie LeftHander base his premise of an invisible...

You wouldn’t know it from all the hype and the endless critics’ awards. But Ang Lee’s "Brokeback Mountain" may be suffering a little burnout in its third week of release. Indeed, "Brokeback"—-aka the Gay Cowboy movie—-has seen declines at the box office every day this week after a huge premiere and subsequent run in gay-concentrated neighborhoods. But now it may be that reality is setting in, and reality bites, as we all know. On Monday, "Brokeback" was 51 percent off from Sunday. On Tuesday, it was down 9.1 percent from Monday. By Wednesday, it was off another 7.6 percent. All...

President Bush accepted responsibility on Wednesday for going to war with faulty intelligence, but firmly defended a decision that has deeply divided the country. "We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved," he said. "It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," the president told a foreign policy forum on the eve of elections to establish Iraq's first permanent, democratically elected government. "And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just...

by James Buchanan November 6, 2005 Opposition to Gay marriage is one of the biggest reasons many people still support the Republicans. The idea of Gay marriage is a monstrous moral abomination and the Democrats outraged ordinary Americans pushing that piece of insanity. The Gay marriage issue is a highly charged emotional issue, and just the sort of thing that Republicans look for, which can keep them in power. Meanwhile other issues like reverse discrimination, the illegal war in Iraq and an eight trillion dollar federal debt get pushed to page two. Over the last ten years, an increasing...

Suppose a Democratic strategist wrote an open letter to colleagues and clients analyzing this week’s election returns. “Republicans have very little to cheer about this election,” he said with some satisfaction. “But off-year elections are rarely harbingers of future performance. Democrats actually did quite well in 2003, to little effect in 2004.” Suppose further that the Democratic strategist signed his name to the letter and distributed it widely.And then suppose one more thing: that the Democratic strategist had not actually written those words but had lifted them wholesale from a liberal blog. (In fact, those words do come from such...

DURING THE 2004 election, the Internet became a potent force in political activism. Fund-raising, grassroots organizing, advertising and communication could all be done with a mouse click at a small fraction of the cost of television spots, direct mail and phone banks. One of the greatest technological advances in the history of civilization enabled anyone with a laptop and a DSL connection to become part of the process to decide the future of America. But some gay activists have been exploiting this new medium to advance a political agenda that doesn’t reflect gay people in general. Instead of focusing on...

To read the letters and e-mails to this newspaper in response to a few opinion columns by Jeff Gannon, you would think he represents a grave threat to the achievement of equality for gay Americans. In fact, many of his loudest critics represent a much more serious obstacle to the success of the gay rights movement. Gannon, of course, made headlines earlier this year after a softball question he asked President Bush at a press briefing led members of the White House press corps to do some digging into his background. They discovered that Gannon's legal name was Jim Guckert...

I am on another discussion board arguing with this idiot who claims Bush can't be trusted at all, because he planted Jeff Gannon in the media to softball favorable questions yadda yadda...

Liberal blogger Eric Brewer, who writes for the blog BTC News, wrote that a 'reporter' for Air America radio has been given a White House press pass.Brewer says he met the new 'reporter' while going through security to cover yesterday's White House briefing by Scott McClellan.The Air America reporter is identified as a lawyer from Aptos, California named Paul Sanford. A quick search shows that Mr. Sanford does have a law practice there, but according to his Website he does not have an education in journalism. However, he is a law professor which might explain his erudite debut question to...

In its upcoming issue, Vanity Fair has done an investigation into the current cause of the kooky left, the case of disgraced White House reporter Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. And reporters David Margolick and Richard Gooding have uncovered...nothing. No White House wrongdoing. No secret plotting or illicit Gannon affairs with White House staffers. No Karl-Rove-master-plan-to-undermine-democracy hijinks. Nothing. "As time passed, Gannon came to seem, to at least some of the [left-wing] bloggers, as more like a freelance zealot than the linchpin of some much larger conspiracy," Margolick and Gooding write. "They now admit that for them Gannon emerged as less a...

NEW YORK James D. Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, has proved his critics wrong on at least one count: His 15 minutes of fame just won't expire. Need more proof? He's set to appear on Bill Maher's live HBO show tonight at 11 p.m. EDT, along with Sen. Charles Schumer, Martin Short, and others. On his Web site today, Gannon announces: "I'll go one on one with [Maher]. ... We're going to talk about politics, last night's presidential press conference, and probably some other stuff." The HBO Web site confirms that Gannon is slated to appear. However, the former White House...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A conservative writer who quit his job covering President Bush amid criticism for his pointedly political questions visited the White House 196 times in two years, the Secret Service has disclosed. James D. Guckert, who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, was Washington bureau chief for Talon News, a conservative online news outlet associated with another Web site, GOPUSA. Guckert posed questions with conservative overtones, attracting scrutiny from liberal bloggers who linked Guckert with online domain addresses suggestive of gay pornography. Guckert resigned in February. Democratic Reps. Louise Slaughter of New York and John Conyers of Michigan...

Secret Service records raise new questions about discredited conservative reporter By John Byrne RAW STORY Editor Day discovered with two check-ins but no check outs; Other events found on some days without press briefings In what is unlikely to stem the controversy surrounding disgraced White House correspondent James Guckert, the Secret Service has furnished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Democratic congressmembers. The documents, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House. Though...

I checked out the reaction over at AmericaBlog, one of the lefty sites that touted Jeff Gannon as The Biggest Story Ever. Some highlights: Boy, It does sound like they are going to be installing "showers" and "ovens" at the Vatican. I see people talking about the Rat Pope's homophobia, misogyny (did his doctoral thesis on St. Augustine!), intolerance, rigid hard-line attitudes, his almost blatant electioneering from the Vatican for Bush, his condemnation of other faiths and on and on and on and on. Well, now it is time to turn attention to the Biblical admonitions against unclean menstruating women...

<p>Jeff Gannon, the former White House reporter for Talon News, a conservative online news outlet, has once again roiled the Washington journalism establishment. Gannon, whose actual name is James Dale Guckert, resigned two months ago after gaining notoriety for using a fake name while working as a reporter covering the White House. Though he had no journalism experience and previously worked as an escort, he managed to ask President Bush a question at a nationally televised news conference.</p>

GayPatriot Goes Silent March 28, 2005 GayPatriot, the anonymous gay Republican blogger, has officially signed off. In a statement, no explanation was given. With GayPatriot's permission, I am now able to recount the real story. On Friday, GayPatriot posted "WANTED: GAY TERRORISTS" in which he identified gay activists and bloggers John Aravosis (Americablog) and Michael Rogers (BlogActive) as terrorists. Wanted for crimes against the gay community. Wanted for repeatedly conducting outing witch hunts against gays who do not believe in radical liberal anti-American ideals. For repeated violations of privacy of gay Americans. For conducting systematic civil liberties attacks on gay...

NEW YORK Jeff Gannon is back. At the National Press Club?Yes, the same day that the prestigious Washington, D.C., journalism organization plans to present a lunch talk by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, it will also allow the former White House reporter/sex site operator to be on a panel discussing bloggers and online journalism. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, resigned his job with the conservative Talon News last month after it was revealed he had used a pseudonym, had little journalism background, and had ties to male escort Web sites. Still, Press Club leaders will include...

Why is Garry Trudeau doing a "Doonesbury" sequence inspired by disgraced Republican-friendly reporter Jeff Gannon? "I'm not sure it's commonly understood to what lengths this administration is willing to go to bypass the 'filter,' as Bush calls the media," the cartoonist replied in an e-mail interview. "The president made it official Wednesday -- his Justice Department (news - web sites), fresh from signing off on torture, apparently thinks propaganda's OK too." When asked if he thought the press has underreported the Gannon episode, pundit payola, and other examples of media manipulation, Trudeau said: "It's not that it's been underreported so...