Free Republic

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A BLOG By Michelle Malkin   ·   June 13, 2005 04:01 PM This blog turned one last week! (BTW: Congrats to Karol at Alarming News, which turned the Big 3 today.) First, some blogiversary expressions of gratitude: Special thanks to the following people for their warm welcomes, words of advice/encouragement, and early links during mm.com's incipient days: John, Paul, and Scott at Power Line, John Hawkins at Right Wing News, Frank J. at IMAO, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom, Bill Ardolino at INDC Journal, Kevin Aylward and the Wizbang crew, Ace of Spades, Spoons, Captain...

Several weeks ago I posted a thread here telling you guys about a new website for conservatives that I was working on. I'll just cut straight to the point. We've gone live: Visit GOPINION.comMy goal is to create a place where anyone can go to easily stay up-to-date with blogs. I know a lot of people who seem interested in them but just don't know where to go to find them. There are also a lot of really great bloggers out there who don't receive the attention that they deserve. Hopefully we can shine the spotlight on them and highlight...

Internet censorship is increasingly common, says technology commentator Bill Thompson, but making small gains in freedom may be enough. "We shouldn't be surprised to learn that the Chinese authorities have finally turned their attention to weblogs and decided that they have to be censored. After all, a government that has put so much effort into controlling the free flow of information was hardly going to ignore a publishing tool that is easily accessible by 78 million net users. Now anyone in China who wants to blog has until 30 June to register or face criminal sanctions, and according to the...

1600 READING [Rod Dreher]We had White House communications director Dan Bartlett in today for an editorial board meeting. I asked him if blogs fit into the WH's communications strategy. He said he has people on his staff whose full-time job is to monitor the blogs to keep up with what's going on. I asked him what the most important blogs to read, from the White House's point of view, are. He said that in terms of what influences the mindset of the Washington media, Kausfiles, the Slate daily roundup of the papers, and Andrew Sullivan were crucial ones to keep...

Blogging has quickly become the hottest thing on the Internet, so when media personalities such as Arianna Huffington and others decide they'd like to join the party, it's a yawner. It's late in the evening, the food is gone and the bar needs to be restocked. So Sean Hannity's announcement of his new "HanniBlog",

TEHRAN - An Iranian weblogger arrested in a crackdown against online dissent has been sentenced to two years behind bars for "insulting the supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his lawyer told AFP Monday. Mojtaba Saminejad "still faces charges of insulting the prophet and spreading curruption, which could cost him more jail terms," lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh said. Seifzadeh said his client had been aquitted of acting against national security and insulting the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He said he would appeal the Revolutionary Court's verdict. Saminejad, 25, was based in the clerical capital of Qom. His weblog,...

Jeff Quinton catalogs some attempts by media types to start their own blogs. To date, traditional media is far removed from the "common people" and hesitant to dirty their hands with blogging "irresponsibility." Thus, early attempts reveal the latent horror within them as they wade into the blogsphere. Jeff Quinton led me to a sample in Brad Warthen's Blog which he links in his post.Welcome to my Weblog, which begins with a series of disclaimers: First, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m making this up as I go along. I could read other blogs and imitate them, but I...

THE VULNERABLE BOBBY BYRD By Michelle Malkin   ·   June 03, 2005 04:03 PM Lots of political blogs buzzing about new poll results showing that Sen. Robert Byrd's re-election bid won't be smooth sailing: A new poll shows Sen. Robert Byrd and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito would run neck and neck in a possible campaign for the Senate seat now held by Byrd. An RMS Strategies Poll released today reports that 46 percent of 401 registered voters in West Virginia would vote for Byrd if the election were held now. A total of 43 percent picked Capito, R-W.Va., though she has...

CITIZEN WEB: Blogs, Political Websites Broaden S.C. Media By Dan Cook Mike Green is a staunch conservative, but he isn’t too pleased with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham these days. “I am a Republican, I voted for Lindsey Graham, I even campaigned for him in Greenville,” Green asserts. But Graham’s work toward brokering a compromise in the Senate fight over President Bush’s judicial nominees has Green reeling, and on May 20 — four days before Graham joined with Senate moderates to avoid a showdown — Green declares himself “hopping mad” over Graham’s reluctance to push for ending the Democrats’ ability to...

For the major media, Watergate was the "good war," in which purely heroic reporters brought down the thoroughly villainous Richard Nixon. So the belated revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat is being cheered by the press establishment - even if those cheers sound a bit like last gasps. Not surprisingly, The Washington Post ran seven self-back-patting articles yesterday, including two on the front page. But others in the Old Media joined in, too: Felt-is-"Throat" led all three nightly broadcast news shows and filled up countless other news holes. For the mostly liberal MSM - mainstream media - the...

<p>Web loggers, who pride themselves on freewheeling political activism, might face new federal rules on candidate endorsements, online fundraising and political ads, though bloggers who don't take money from political groups would not be affected.</p> <p>Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.</p>

Online confessors are like flashers. They exhibit themselves anonymously and publicly, with little consideration for you, the audience. Browse some of the confessionals on the Web: grouphug.us (a simple log), notproud.com (organized by deadly sin) or dailyconfession.com (where you can barely find the confessions for all the promotional stuff). You can see for yourself. One online confessional, though, breaks the mold. At PostSecret, found at postsecret.blogspot.com, the confessions are consistently engaging, original and well told. How come? The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself. That...

A doomed Queens man's chilling computer entry led cops to a suspect who allegedly robbed and killed the victim and his sister to finance a return to China, police said yesterday. Jin Lin, 23, was charged with first-degree murder yesterday in the bloody slayings of Sharon and Simon Ng in their Kew Gardens Hills apartment Thursday, officials said. Cops zeroed in on Lin, who once dated the woman, because Ng typed a journal entry into his computer fingering his sister's ex-boyfriend as the suspect, police said. "He wrote that he was wondering why Lin was there and wished he would...

The reason this site is up and running , is because I believe in the power of the voice of the people of this great land we live in. There does come a time, when the people must act in order to preserve this great land. It is our duty as Americans to stand up to the enemies of America, be it foreign or domestic.

When an anonymous professor launched a brutally candid Web site, some SMU students thought the resemblance to their school was striking – and offensive. The "Phantom Professor" blog dished about epidemic eating disorders and wealthy students looking for a "Mrs." degree. The author dubbed girls in $500 sandals toting $1,500 handbags "the Ashleys" and called a handsome male colleague "Hot Pockets."

Check out the accompanying article by Ajai Raj, a sophomore at the University of Texas who publicly kept yelling obscenities during Ann Coulter’s speech and then publicly asked her, “You say that you believe in the sanctity of marriage, how do you feel about marriages where the man does nothing but f--- his wife up the ass?” Just about a week earlier a leftist publicly asked Justice Antonin Scalia if he engaged in anal sex with his wife (who was present). These symbolize to me one of the most profound differences between the Left and the Right. I do not...

May 15, 2005 Blogging, as in Slogging By DAVID GREENBERG "YOU should have a blog."Apparently I push my opinions on my friends rather aggressively, because I often hear this remark.Last week, I had my chance. My wife and I agreed to be "guest bloggers" - the online equivalent of what David Brenner used to do for Johnny Carson - for Dan Drezner, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, who runs a popular libertarian-conservative blog, DanielDrezner.com. How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis...

The Huffington Post, an Internet blog that debuted May 9 after a campaign that would have delighted P.T. Barnum, makes me nostalgic for the good old days of journalism. It isn't that its founder, Arianna Huffington (who named it for herself in true Hollywood "enough about me, not what do YOU think about me" fashion) doesn't have every right to join the increasingly clogged blog superhighway. Rather, this blog has an agenda and speaks mostly to people who already believe what most of its writers say. In The Huffington Post, the musical genius Quincy Jones explains that Michael Jackson's problem...

A Selective Adherence to Tradition - Why is it that when it comes to the judiciary, some traditions matter more than others? by Hugh Hewitt 05/12/2005 12:00:00 AM WHEN THE WORD "IMPEACHMENT" was uttered in March and April as an option for dealing with renegade judges, the guardians of conventional wisdom were quick to denounce "ideologues," who, in the words of the New York Times editorialists, "are trying to bully judges into following their political line." The Washington Post's editors agreed: "It is essential that the judges who stood up to Congress now receive ample support--so that judges will feel...

...Blogs have become an increasingly potent force in politics. Eight million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58 percent in 2004 and now stands at more than a quarter of Internet users, according to the Pew Internet research center. "We have the ability as scrappy online warriors to direct a higher percentage of our money and receive greater value for each dollar that we spend," says blogPAC architect and MyDD blogger Jerome Armstrong. To start, the group directed and placed several online video ads. While campaigns poured money into television, blogPAC ran web ads in a...