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Judging from today’s horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself. What Arianna Huffington's bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree conservative-to-liberal conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn’t accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This Web-site venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable, because of all the advance publicity touting its success as inevitable. Her blog is such a bomb that it’s the box-office equivalent of...

Wal Mart says it imported about $18 billion in goods from China in 2003. The annual sales for that year by Wal Mart was approximately $250 billion dollars. However, when you walk through your local Wal Mart and look on the label of products in the store the majority of products say "Made in China". I went through my local Wal mart the other day and was surprised on what I found. Just about all the Black & Decker and Stanley tools were made in China. GE toasters, microwaves, and vacuum cleaners were all made in China. I looked at...

Are you sick and tired of reading about the Runaway Bride? And if you read about one more child being raped and muredered, are you gonna lose it? Well then, I have found what you've been looking for. Ted Mathis has had a few occasional glimpses of insight into a world that few Americans know about. Certainly the MSM will not report on this; but every once in awhile I read excerpts of what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and I stand amazed! OK, I'm not literally standing, but you know what I mean. In any event, I have...

Most of Mrs. Bush's humor at the correspondents' dinner was just right: Edgy but not over the edge. But I think the stripper and horse jokes were totally beneath her. Just put it to the other-shoe test: If it were Teresa Heinz Kerry standing up on the dais telling the same jokes, the conservative commentariat would be buzzing for the rest of the year about what a tasteless skank she is.

I'll get to First Lady Laura Bush's bawdy stand-up routine in a minute. But I want to highlight a related new book out about how young conservatives are shaking up the dominant liberal media culture. It's called "South Park Conservatives." My name is listed on the cover along with many other (mostly) right-leaning pundits, websites, and bloggers, but I must confess to having mixed feelings about the honor. The best-selling book's author, Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute, writes a fun, breezy survey documenting the rise of talk radio, FOX News, the Internet, conservative publishing, and college Republican activism....

THE HILLARY CLINTON ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT By Michelle Malkin   ·   May 03, 2005 08:38 AM Peter Paul, the businessman whose allegations spurred a four-year FBI probe into an August 2000 celebrity fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign, is launching a new project today. Here's an e-mail I received about it last night, in which Paul expressed displeasure regarding this post, where I discussed all of Hillary's bagmen: Yes, I was coerced to become her biggest contributor by far, but when I discovered she didnt report my contribution in February, 2001, I immediately approached the FBI and the Justice Dept with...

Hi, I am the Dad of "Attila and the Huns", a rock/punk band that has had numerous songs debut here on Free Republic (for instance, the Michael Moore skewering Hateful Lies and the post-election "nyah nyah" The Better Man Won. The band is one of 28 in the Orlando region picked to compete in a competition sponsored by Zippo Lighters... first prize includes an actual tour. Friends, if you have enjoyed these kids' work in the past, please go to their site (www.aath.net) and click on the banner for the Zippo Hot Tour. You'll have to register, but once you...

Apr 26, 10:14 AM EDTHuffington Invites Celebs to Join Blog By GARY GENTILEAP Business Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Political commentator Arianna Huffington will launch a news and opinion Web site next month including blogs written by more than 200 celebrities and leaders such as retired journalist Walter Cronkite, writer David Mamet and billionaire Barry Diller, CEO of IAC InterActive Corp. "The two most interesting things happening online are the news and the blogosphere and what we're doing here is bringing them together," Huffington, a one-time candidate for California governor, told The Associated Press Monday.One feature of the site, called...

Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere. Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective. She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls "the most creative minds" in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion. It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the...

Asking few questions makes a difference. There's a change of mentality that started to occur in Iraq even before the 9th of April, but toppling Saddam marked a surge in the change process that made it transfere into an active form and spread wider than before. I think one of the main problems in Arab-Muslim communities is that the vast majority from the illiterate to even highly educated people do not ask enough questions. On the other hand, I've noticed (mainly through blogging ) that westerns in general and Americans in particular always have so many questions to ask and...

I have always wanted to start a journal of some kind. A place where I could dump some overly serious brain usage onto some white space with minimal worry or guilt. I have always had an active mind in that it is constantly working on some piece of information that flew in either arbitrarily or directly. It's the arbitrary ones that usually have me worked up by the end of the day. The ones that may not really affect me personally but appeal to my emotion or sense of reason. Kind of like the anniversary of the Murrah building bombing...

Yesterday, Drudge linked to a nasty anti-Tom Delay t-shirt being hawked at Cafe Press. The shirt urged the GOP congressman to commit suicide. Sold by artist Christopher Godwin, the product has now been removed (though you can still see it on Cafe Press's search engine complete with the caption "We can dream, can't we?"). Not to worry. There are plenty of other hate-filled, liberal knick-knacks and apparel items still on sale. Like this "Kill Bush" magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head with the caption "End Terrorism Now:" And before the "everybody does it" apologists pooh-pooh this...

HOW MANY AMERICANS READ POLITICAL BLOGS, PART II By Michelle Malkin   ·   April 13, 2005 09:19 AM If there are 120 million Americans adults online, this survey suggests that 31 million Americans read a political blog at least once a month and 6 million Americans read a political blog at least once a day. This would mean that Instapundit is read by less than 3% of those who read political blogs on a daily basis. I don't believe it. I suspect the survey results would be quite different if respondents were informed that the Drudge Report, Slate, Free Republic, Democratic...

Daly's Thoughts bring us a story of supposed GOP trickery. Summary: The GOP is handing out "misleading" awards for 'Physician of the Year' and then charging for them. ABC reported this using Dr. Rudolph Mueller as an "innocent victim" of such trickery. I want to blow the lid off this because I sensed something wrong. I looked up Mueller's book - "As Sick as it Gets" and this is a short description, "The shocking realities of raging high costs, untold human tragedy and blatant greed are the basis of this compelling case for universal, single payer healthcare in the United...

This time, the hoax was on them. Still gloating over their role in unmasking CBS's faulty National Guard memo story last September, right-wing bloggers launched a new memo-based crusade against the so-called liberal media last month, one that turned out to be completely phony. But unlike CBS and its tarred former anchor, Dan Rather, who eventually admitted their mistakes in the Memogate affair, these bloggers (many of whom were also involved in the CBS campaign) haven't had the guts to apologize for their blunder. When the Terri Schiavo story became national news in mid-March, a curious subplot revolved around a...

This is a call to tech minded Freepers (everyone from software engineers to hobbyists) to contribute in some way to make FR better than it already is from a technical standpoint. FR (i think) uses a from scratch proprietary system so any improvements to the system would have to first have to suggested then petitioned to JimRob to look at the code. Bandwidth and other issues could most likely addressed by updating the FR system with valid W3C code and implementing various caching tricks. THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF HOW FR IS RUN NOW. We all enjoy FR and...

On-line journal provokes a firestorm By JANE TABER Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Page A1 SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER OTTAWA -- An unassuming 42-year-old call-centre manager and Star Trek fan from Minneapolis, Minn., has provoked a political firestorm in Canada. Ed Morrissey -- Captain Ed to his friends -- published on the weekend what no Canadian is allowed to print or broadcast. On his Internet blog, he posted testimony before the Gomery commission that is subject to a publication ban. Yesterday, after the story of his blogging exploits broke in the Canadian media, Mr. Morrissey saw the traffic on his website increase...

In a move unlikely only because it's taken this long to happen, pundit-about-town Arianna Huffington is extending her hosting largess to the blogosphere. This month the wannabe California governor is launching a Slate-like Web site where a cast of bigwigs, including Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), David Geffen, Barry Diller, Larry David, Tom Freston, Ari Emanuel, Jim Wiatt Tina Brown and Harold Evans will each have their own blog from which to spout Big Thoughts about politics. Huffington wouldn't comment, but it was confirmed that a soft-launch of the Huffington Report would be up and running before the end of April....

Sophie Maxwell, member of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, has decided to take on the Internet and free speech. Sophie announced yesterday that The Board of Supervisors will soon vote on a city ordinance, which she filed, that would require local bloggers to register with the City Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.  Blogs that mention candidates for local office that receive more than 500 hits will be forced to pay a registration fee and will be subject to website traffic audits, according to Chad Jacobs, a San Francisco City Attorney.  However,...

Lessons from Terri Terri death is one of those issues that clarify many things. There is a significant group of people in this country, mostly on the left, but this issue does across party lines to some extent both ways, who believe that ultimate power in this country rests, not with the people or their elective representatives, but with Judges. While they may not refer to it in this way, in their view a judge is effectively royalty. Perhaps the Judges on the lower courts are Lords and those on the Supreme Court the Kings, but they are royalty. Just...