It was the Great Purge of April 2007. Freepers who were pro-Giuliani were either asked to leave or zotted. A lot of people quit posting here around that time.
The following is to Howlin’s posting history. Her last
post was on 4/22/2007, 5:11:32 AM · 1,634 of 18,465
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:howlin/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
Howlin and others were contentious to people that they didn’t agree with before the Giuliani wars. When a lot of new people showed up about 3-4 years before that they didn’t seem too welcoming.
The Giuliani war just brought the feelings to a head and people could no longer ignore things that were already getting rocky. It became open warfare then.
I respected the intelligence and views of many of the posters that are no longer here, but if you go to their posts before they left or were banned it becomes clear why that happened.