"Bush orders settlement to conservative GOP website by City of Fresno by Troy Montague Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004 at 11:03 PM Settlement funnels money to local conservative website on orders of president George Bush. Rightwing website "FreeRepublic" to recieve large settlement from City of Fresno.
This is urgent-read and call the attorney general's office as soon as you can. We must stop this criminal give-away to GOP activists at taxpayer expense.
The City of Fresno has announced it is paying a large settlement to the "FreeRepublic", a right wing conservative website/forum to settle a lawsuit filed by Freerepublic alledging defamation and damage of reputation. Some background on the case:
The case FreeRepublic vs. City of Fresno stems from a bulletin sent to Fresno Police by Fresno Human Relations Commissioner Debbie Reyes regarding an event planned on sept. 13th by the Fresno chapter of FreeRepublic Network. This event, billed by Freerepublic as a picnic/rally was a subject of concern to Reyes as she had been made aware of possible counter-protests to the picnic/rally by activists critical of FreeRepublic Network's harrassment of anti-war activists and general right-wing extremist nature. Ms. Reyes faxed a notice to police that there might be possible conflicts at the event and notified them that FreeRepublic was well known as an organized hate group disguising themselves as patriotic americans. This notice and resulting publicity resulted in the lawsuit naming City of Fresno, Debbie Reyes, and Mayor Alan Autry as defendants. They alledged Reyes fax resulted in defamation and filed suit seeking $1,000,000 compensation.
The very very strange thing in all this is George Bush met with Fresno Mayor Alan Autry on 10/15/2003 and there is good reason to believe this lawsuit by the FreeRepublic Network was the main topic of conversation between the two. The FreeRepublic online forum is a darling centerpiece of the GOP party, the largest and most highly trafficked GOP oriented website in existence. Progressive activists have long suspected FreeRepublic receives under the table covert funding directly or indirectly from the GOP party. (Read: use of GOP $'s should be illegal because its GOP) So it is quite likely and plausible that when Autry met with Bush and discussed this with him Bush told him to pay off these good old-boy conservatives and get some funds into their hands so they can continue their fight against the left and all things progressive.
It is clear that before any settlement is paid to FreeRepublic an investigation into ties between Mayor Alan Autry and FreeRepublic should be undertaken. He has been supportive of their activitys to a suspicious degree (Read: any support of opposition political speech = very suspicious) and it is apparent he was very interested in arranging for the city to settle out of court on the lawsuit and quickly get some money into the hands of his fellow patriots at FreeRepublic.
Did Fresno Mayor Alan Autry work at the suggestion of George Bush to supply a large cash settlement to FreeRepublic at taxpayer's expense? Demand an investigation. Contact: California State Attoney General "