No one has to monitor 24/7. You don't need to search to find older posts.
Possibly, you're looking at latest posts and that makes it difficult for you to find older articles?
This may help: Go to http://www.freerepublic.com/home.htm. Click on "latest articles," NOT on "latest posts."
Scroll down and you can see all articles. Click on "see more results" and you can see older articles. No need to search.
If you only look at current articles, then you will only see current articles.
Articles do NOT need to be reposted in violation of the rules (see my above post). Duplicates run up the FR server capacity requirements and, accordingly, the costs incurred by FR. They can be easily found by just scrolling down and clicking back.
That was helpful, thanks.