I’d like more details on the link problem ... though I will now investigate.
It appears to me that the destination page URL has a non-ASCII character in it, most likely it's the "dash" before "at Long Last". The non-ASCII character bollixes up the redirect.
http://www.freerepublic.com/%5Ehttp://blog.heartland.org/2011/03/its-time-to-allow-npr-to-come-out-of-the-closet-%E2%80%94%C2%A0at-long-last/
The lower link under your excerpt is not redirected, it's just a plain URL, so no interpretation, so it works as intended.