[proxy_user]

I just typed Free Republic into Google, and got:

Free Republic
https://freerepublic.com › tag
While this is no surprise, of course google has freerepublic on its radar as an enemy, here is a listing of a large number (hundreds) and FR makes the grade.

Bwahaha!

[palmer]

They call it a blacklist, but it's probably a graylist. Google is much too smart to block sites from search results. But they can monkey with the ordering, making sure a news headline takes a searcher somewhere other than FR.

A smart/evil way to do this is to stealthily insert politics into the search algorithm. But if they are lazy they will use an explicit graylist. My guess is they are lazy, or zealots in which case a graylist is perfectly justified in their mind.