Excerpt:
AFTER MY COLUMN last Friday about President Bush's decision to classify fetuses as children, I received a spate of angry mail. One kind soul e-mailed me an alert that the column had been posted on FreeRepublic.com, "The Premier Conservative News Forum," and predicted that I'd be getting "an onslaught of hate mail from rabid right-wing freaks."
(Quick glimpse at some of the messages I got: "Is that the way you spend all your time? Hating people?" "Would you look down from Heaven and defend your mother if she had aborted you?" "Your panic and fear is obvious by the way you write.")
So I thought I ought to pay a visit to the Web site. On the FreeRepublic home page, I was welcomed thus: "We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!" No objections there from me. Freedom of speech; gotta love it. And who's in favor of political fraud and corruption? Not I. Still ... I don't know why, but that "Hoo-yah!" unsettled me. (Maybe because it's like "yahoo" backwards?)
Anyway, the site is a collection of forums and postings on various umbrella topics such as foreign affairs, activism and philosophy, with links to sites like the Cato Institute (a libertarian forum on public policy), the Drudge Report, the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank), the Rush Limbaugh show and the Linda Tripp Defense Fund (with a post-make-over photo -- hey, why not?).
I know what she means. The word "yahoo" unsettles me too. :)