Free Republic

Free speech is under fire. Online thugs are targeting bloggers (mostly conservative, but not all) who have dared to expose a convicted bomber and perjuring vexatious litigant who is now enjoying a comfy life as a liberally subsidized social justice operative. Where do your elected representatives stand on this threat to our founding principles? On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, bravely stepped forward to press this vital issue. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Chambliss decried the "harassing and frightening actions" of Internet menaces who recently have gone after several conservative new media citizen journalists and activists....

(Reuters) - AOL Inc on Friday won the dismissal of a lawsuit by unpaid bloggers who complained they were deprived of their fair share of the roughly $315 million that the company paid last March to buy The Huffington Post website.

UK police seize computers of skeptic blogger in England Posted on December 14, 2011 by Anthony Watts The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence. He writes: After surveying my ancient stack of Sun Sparcstations and PII 400 pc’s, they ended up settling for two laptops and...

For those of us that spend hours online, writing, blogging and reporting this judges decision is a serious additional threat to our freedom of expression. Citizen journalism, blogging, micro-blogging, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It is a form of journalism that isn’t controllable by the elite establishment. Expect more attacks as we continue to tear down the corrupt infrastructure known as the lame stream media. Here is the a wire service report about the decision: A federal judge in Portland, Ore., has ruled that a Montana blogger was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon...

A Blogging Milestone Noman passed 12,000 hits today and thought to reflect on his first nine months of blogging. He started on February 12th with a post entitled "Jimmy Carter's Second Term." It concerned Hosni Mubarak's fall in Egypt with American consent (if not help), and the comparison between President Obama and President Carter's governance of domestic and international affairs. Since then, he has vacillated from short-to-mid-size comments to lengthy essays. As hoped for, blogging has served to stimulate more formal writing for other fora, and even to order thoughts for a series of radio interviews. There have been 213...

A must read for bloggers of all stripes: how Donald Douglas from American Power  whupped the copyright trolls in court... 'Beating Righthaven' -here-

Today at Right Wing News John Hawkins asks, and sort of answers a question that has loomed in my mind since my own blog, The Looking Spoon, started. From today's post The Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere... Bloggers have asked me: So what's the strategy to deal with this? Really, it's simple: Get big or go home. Find a way to dramatically increase the size of your blog, expand into multiple websites that together are big, hook up with someone who's already big, or accept that there isn't much of a future in a small,...

Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall lost his endorsement deal from Champion sports apparel last week for tweeting his doubts that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by hijacked jetliners and for expressing his sentiments that we had "only heard one side" of the Osama Bin Laden story. Mendenhall quickly backed off from the pair of tweets. He deleted the 9/11 remark and published a blog post explaining that he wasn't a Bin Laden supporter. But it was too late. He had already joined the ranks of high-profile users who've been burned by microblogging. Keith Olbermann previously stepped...

So you finally decided to take the big step, to wade into the debates of the day, and lend your ever-so-wise voice to the great political public square. You’ve decided to become a political blogger. Now what? And what can you learn and expect as you step forth to ideological battle and proclaim the truth as you know it? I have blogged from a conservative point of view for many years, both as an individual as well as in a group blog format, and in that time I like to think that I’ve learned a few things about blogging along...

Having been a regular user of MSNBC owned Newsvine since December 2010, I hereby issue warning to all non-liberal people in America, who want to utilize their right to free speech: DO NOT attend and contribute on Newsvine!! This liberal owned and liberal biased outlet is a typical example of what happens, when a little group of far left extremists assume control over free speech. Poor, biased moderation of the site allows liberals to collapse articles and seeds if the "community" don't like the content, and while name calling and other personal attacks are deemed illegal according to the "Code...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9155J1V8XaM&feature=fvstTalk about ironic - Philadelphia to ban free speech - unless you got cash! Another attempt to take out the middle class by making it too expensive to participate. In Philadelphia if you don't have the cash you also get denied your first amendment rights. Hmmmmm Make this viral folks because the bull always starts small and keeps gaining momentum UNTIL it is stopped

Progressives grasp at any opportunity to quash free speech.  The internet and the anonymity it provides is a fat target for them.  How can internet speech be "managed," they ask? Stanley Fish explores this subject in his NY Times piece, Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet.  He employs the work of liberal thinkers who claim to be for free speech but then start throwing around concepts like "managing free speech" and coining terms like "low-value speech."  When you hear Sunsteinian progressives talk like this, watch out!  "What is remarkable about this volume is that the legal academics who...

After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren't kidding. The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported. The group will launch a recruitment drive this week coinciding with a weekend policy summit being held in Phoenix for state and local coordinators. Shelby Blakely, a stay-at-home mom from eastern Washington state who is organizing the project, said she has little doubt they will...

The Constitution Club (www.Constitutionclub.org) is an established blog and is currently accepting applications for new authors who can provide interesting and fresh perspectives on the issues of the day. If you write from a conservative or right wing, libertarian perspective you are encouraged to contact us at constitutionclub@gmail.com. If you are new to blogging, a group blog like this is a good way to ease into blogging and get some good experience. We have a good group of bloggers to work with and a fun little blogging community of fellow conservatives. Some are experienced and some are not. A good...

Why sensible people avoid discussing race... I had Monday morning off and I wandered back into Left Blogistan.  I couldn't help myself...  Kinda like driving by an old girlfriend's house... The mid-term elections must have hit the lefties hard; they're cannibalizing themselves over there.I stumbled upon a thread that illustrates why sensible people don't discuss race. The thread is also a beautiful microcosm of liberalism itself. A blogger named Sheria wrote a piece about how she's tired of the left beating up on President Obama.  She larded her sermon with standard liberal pieties and pontifications, and topped it off with...

Read the first few paragraphs of this AP story on Catholic bloggers, and see if anything in particular strikes you: Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough. Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church. -In the Archdiocese of Boston, parishioners are dissecting the work of...

Inquiry: By chance, I was wondering if you chaps might be innocently wondering, as I have, as to the decrease, and/or otherwise, of the activity on personal blogs or websites, etc. that y'all may operate as a hobby in your spare time relating to any of a number of topics. If so, perhaps y'all may care to comment on this--if you get chance--I realize y'all may be quite busy....??? That would be nice. Semper Fidelis Gunny G aka: Dick Gaines ***** *****

How does a financially strapped city with a shrinking manufacturing base and rising unemployment attempt to make a little extra cash? Tax the bloggers. Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for a business license, whether or not the blog brings in a fraction of that amount in profit, according to the Philadelphia City Paper. Marilyn Bess blogs about eco-friendly living in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. She occasionally contributes to the DIY site eHow.com. Her profit in the last few years - $50. She told the City Paper that she received a letter from the city in May, demanding...

Are you a blogger in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? Do you have Google Adsense or some other sort of low-return ads on your blog? If so expect a letter soon from your friendly city treasurer demanding that you pay a $300 tax on your "money making business." For most people that maintain an active blog it is just a hobby. Some people blog daily but most only do so a few times a month. Many bloggers also participate in Google's advertising program called Adsense but few make much more than $20 or $30 a year from the effort. But...

A website that lists the victims of Righthaven LLC's "shake down" lawsuits that are causing irreparable harm to the blogging, non-profit and small business communities. Righthaven LLC -- a bottom feeding legal outfit -- has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue 'mom and pop' websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, community action, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to "settle out of court." All cases are being filed...