Free Republic

ON THE OTHER HAND [Jonah Goldberg] A reader warns that we shouldn't be too hard on Bush lest we face the alternative: Jonah, I am a 25 year old medical student (4th year) at Penn, and have followed your writing over the last three years. I greatly appreciate your ability to communicate fundamental (but often unspoken) arguments, and your advice on challenging cliches has helped me make sense of much of the intellectual mush I've been fed over the last several years. With all this in mind, I am honestly very frightened when I hear key conservative voices talking about...

<p>TIME WAS, we thought that a conclusive demonstration that the emperor had no clothes would be sufficient to overturn his reign. No leader could take power without media support; no ruler could keep his throne without the cooperation of the press. But the consolidation of media in recent years -- a series of intermarriages consecrated by the FCC -- has created a panic among tube-feeding activists like myself. Increasingly, the opportunity to define the "truth" has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What's more, the new Media Hyperbarons are corporations of such colossal wealth and power that they are guaranteed to support the status quo that gave rise to them.</p>

President Bush's campaign will unveil a Web site today that allows proprietors of online journals -- Blogs or Web logs -- to "get the latest campaign headlines and inside scoop posted instantly to your site through a live news feed from GeorgeWBush.com!" Bush's campaign is leaving nothing to chance as his devotees spread his message. The automatic feeds are offered in horizontal and vertical versions. ... Campaign manager Ken Mehlman said the site's purpose is "sharing the president's positions and tying them to grass-roots activities so that everyone who wants to, has something to do." The site allows a user...

We've all heard of Senateur John Le Kerry's little faux pas in Philly the other day: If Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential aspirations melt like a dollop of Cheez Whiz in the sun, the trouble may well be traced to an incident in South Philadelphia on Monday. There, the Massachusetts Democrat went to Pat's Steaks and ordered a cheesesteak -- with Swiss cheese. If that weren't bad enough, the candidate asked photographers not to take his picture while he ate the sandwich; shutters clicked anyway, and Kerry was caught nibbling daintily at his sandwich -- another serious faux pas. "It...

Hi all. I'm here to announce that my blog is open for business. I don't have an email page or a bulletin board up yet, but I will. Meantime, I'd like to hear whatever reactions I can from any of you who choose to drop by and take a look. Just hit the source link and it should take you there. I would appreciate any reactions on this thread. Thanks again. Be Seeing You, Chris

<p>WASHINGTON - Tom Daschle is coming soon to a blog near you.</p> <p>The Senate minority leader and South Dakota Democrat will post a daily diary on his official Web site as he drives around the state next month during Congress' annual August recess, he said Wednesday. The diary is modeled on the growing phenomenon of the online journals known as Weblogs, or blogs for short.</p>

Operation Expanding Freepdom continues to grow by leaps and bounds with new Freeper blogs coming out of the woodwork and joining our network everyday. I can barely keep up! Thank you to everyone who has participated so far, and if you want to know how to start your own blog, read on or click here, here, or here. Despite sensible voices like Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks, and Glenn Reynolds, blogging is being portrayed as the medium for left-wing candidates and activists. Therefore, I'd like to begin a feature where we spotlight leading examples of conservative activism in the blogosphere....

Earlier this week, a Free Republic Blog Directory, or Blogroll, was established here on Free Republic. The goal of this effort is to spotlight key weblogs written by Freepers from a conservative, pro-Bush perspective -- and to expand Freepdom to include the fast-growing "blogosphere." Hence the name: Operation Expanding Freepdom! The response so far has been great. Here's the very latest listing of Freeper blogs, including those started as a result of the original thread. If your blog isn't on this list, REPLY TO THIS THREAD with your blog's address. Cathryn CrawfordWilliam McKinleyRegnum CrucisMichael KingFederal ReviewThe View from ArlenImalMHGinTNAnna Z.The...

On Friday, I wrote a piece asking why Freepers don't get more involved in reading and writing blogs to expand Free Republic's influence in a growing medium that needs more conservative, pro-Bush voices. The response was phenomenal. Click here to read the original thread, "Are Freepers Still Winning the Online War?" One of the ideas that grew out of that thread was to start a Free Republic Blog Directory, or blogroll, as bloggers call it. From time to time, we will list all Freepers with blogs on threads like this to draw attention to their fine conservative writings. All Free...

washingtonpost.com 'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions By Leslie Walker Sunday, July 13, 2003; Page F07 The "blogosphere" may never be the same after America Online releases free blog-publishing software to its 34 million members this summer. AOL this month began showing demos of its tools for creating Web logs, or blogs, to veteran bloggers. AOL has dubbed its service "AOL Journals" because its surveys showed that members found the word "blogs" confusing, said Rick Robinson, AOL's vice president for community products.

Are Freepers still winning the online war? I think we still are. But as conservatives, we need to ask what we can be doing better. One area in which we can and do must do more is blogs. What are blogs, you ask? They’re personal web journals run by online pundits, and they’re achieving enormous popularity both online and in the media. Blogs like InstaPundit.com, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Right Wing News are daily must reads where some of the best minds opine on the really important stories of the day, and where upstart bloggers (folks not unlike you and...

Redefining Conservatives By John Bender George Bush is getting credit for redefining the Republican Party and taking issues away from the Democrats by advancing their agenda and taking credit for the advances. He is not getting credit for an even bigger accomplishment, redefining the political labels in use for about 100 years. By calling himself a conservative, Bush is redefining the term. Since at least as far back as Woodrow Wilson's administration, the word conservative meant someone who favored smaller government, less government spending, and a belief that it was not the government's job to redistribute wealth from those...

FIREWORKS BEGIN, THEY WILL ONCE AGAIN SAY COLTER DOESN'T EVEN DESERVE TO SPEAK OR SELL BOOKS BECAUSE SHE HOLDS EXTREME VIEWS. TRUE ONES AT THAT

Friday, June 20 2003 We thought that maybe she had more to say . . . Beginning Monday, Ann regularly will offer her thoughts on issues and ideas of the day here on her blog, CoulterGeist, exclusively on Human Events Online. If you thought her weekly column and her books raised the ire of liberals, wait until the Left gets a load of CoulterGeist. - Posted 1:29 PM

In what is becoming on of the only blogs any thinking individual need check day in and day out. Links to the best thinkers in the world. The Daily Blog: The KMC Blog.

The Safety Terrorists By Deborah Venable Where do I begin to fill in the abundance of evidence for such a provocative title? No, it all didn't start with the September 11th terrorist attacks but perhaps those events have led to a truly infected mess that we must begin to address with intelligence instead of hysteria. It probably all started the first time somebody somewhere uttered those ill-fated words, "there ought to be a law." Perhaps the first time someone looked around for someone else to blame for his own misfortune – yes, these two souls probably got together at...

<p>A mysterious weblog purporting to be the journal of an anonymous heiress on the run from her wealthy family appears to be a hoax. But the site and offline elements supporting it are so elaborate and so well executed that many bloggers suspect the whole thing just might be true.</p>

Hi all.I know that some people here are fans of Blogs. I am one as well. I had a brainstorm for something new here at FR, and Jim gave me the go-ahead to give it a whirl. The idea is for a quasi~official blog. The Freeper Island Blog.Why Freeper Island? Because like Survivor, a blogger can be voted off the island. Basically what I am imagining is that we will have a dozen people who are the designated inhabitants of the Freeper Island Blog. There will be a blog thread each day, and any of the twelve can add items...

Thousands of people from around the world who are anxious to understand what life is like for ordinary Iraqis in wartime turn daily to an online diary that purports to describe one man's view of life in Baghdad. But on Monday night and Tuesday morning, site visitors saw a faked shot of President George W. Bush holding Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in a playful headlock, instead of the authentic photos of Baghdad that normally appear on the Dear Raed weblog. For the last six months the site's creator, who uses the pseudonym Salam Pax, has chronicled Iraq's political situation from...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A mysterious Iraqi who calls himself Salam Pax, writing a Web log from the heart of Baghdad, has developed a large Internet following with his wry accounts of daily life in a city under U.S. bombardment. Salam Pax, a pseudonym crafted from the Arabic and Latin words for peace, came back on line on Monday after a two-day break because of interruptions in Internet access. The traffic on his Web site, http://dear_raed.blogspot.com, caused the server to go down and Salam's e-mail folder has filled with inquiries about his true identity.