Thanks for all the great 'welcome' messages folks - such a friendly place this is!
Actually dalight, in talking to Pierce it *did* seem like he was close to throwing up his hands...the poor guy sounded exhausted, beaten-down and somewhat confused. I really did feel for him.
By the way, a WaPo reporter got hold of me on Friday and spent about an hour talking to me about the Pierce info...don't know if they're going to use any of my info, but that's fine if they don't - that leaves the Athens Banner-Herald as the sole news source with the scoop on Pierce!
Anyway.. this Free Republic is a very interesting thing. I see in the core of it .. the ideas that are underlying the Open Source movement. The seminal paper on this is The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond. His arguments about software development are very much applicable to the news. Perhaps you can do a trend piece on this.
In this story, I have seen alot of self congratulations around here. And, they are deserved. But I have also seen the power and goodness of real journalists really digging for a story, opposing journalists that believe you have the story and then find the facts to support it.
Free Republic has lots of threads and lots of conjecture but folks also are here because they are sick of spin. So in the exchange, real info gets shared. The ethos of quoting here and asking for links and sources rather than analyzing our navels is all part of this.
This place is a sausage grinder for the truth. You will notice in the news thread tons of postings of info that runs contrary to the main world view of many who lurk here. This isn't a place to bury your head in the sand. But I prefer it here to any place I have ever seen. Drudge gets the headline and he is also very fair, not because he agrees with the things he posts, its just cause they seem important (as if I know what Drudge thinks). The MSM needs to catch up.
Anyway, I look for great things from you now that you have found at least one good source, lol!