When you asked them some honest questions, without first uttering the holy mantra "David is innocent, and God will avenge him!" you were attacked mercilessly.
They began to descend into a sort of shorthand in their conversations that took them further and further out of the realm of reality and into their own little universe "through the looking glass."
No, these weren't "long-standing respectable Freepers," it was the same bunch of conspiracy mongers and navel-gazers that we're only able to rid ourselves of when something hit the fan, like Buchanan pulling 0.4% of the popular vote (we were relieved of the burden of a great number of really nasty Brigadiers at that time).