in one way you are correct. google-analytics does track your information here, but they are doing this at the request of freerepublic. if you view the source code for a page on fr (or have your tech savvy hubby show you), you will see the request to have google-analytics tracking included at the bottom of the code.
this is extremely common on websites, as the reports google provides from this data are very useful to the website operator. there are ways to block this (and other such tracking), if you are bothered by this behavior. it may slightly degrade and/or change how some sites work for you, though. ymmv.
Thank you for that information. I guess I am just a conspiracy nut, after all.