Free Republic

Mary Mapes is in gloat over-drive. Dan Rather's erstwhile producer, the woman behind Memogate, is beside herself with joy at what she sees as the impending death of the conservative blogosphere. It's her expectation that Barack Obama will win the presidency that has Mapes so hopeful. Annotated excerpts from her HuffPo column, The Monster is Dying [emphasis added]: * This whole thing is starting to feel a lot like the climactic death scene at the end of a 1950s monster movie. * Palin actually resembles that old monster movie staple -- the beautiful-but-bookish brunette working as a lab assistant for...

An ordinary citizen speaks up about how federal policies affect his family and his pocketbook, and bloggers dive into his personal life. His finances, his address, his background and family connections are all splashed all over the Internet as bloggers line up to debate whether the instant celebrity is all he appears to be. Many feel he's concealing enough about his background to make his opinion worthless. Next the media steps in to defend the ordinary guy. Time Magazine's Karen Tumulty says he's being swift-boated. The New York Times says he's being slimed. One partisan blogger says the other...

Film-maker Michael Moore has apparently praised the gulf weather for its chance of disrupting the Republican convention: “This hurricane is proof that there is a god in heaven.” Another low point in politics, though possibly one that could be passed off with a laugh—a partisan irony, rather than a serious derangement. But over on the leftist Daily Kos website, there is a post that sinks much lower—so low that it caused many of the commentators to denounce it. Which led another commentator to make this remark: I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to destroy the Republican Party as...

Here's an interesting representation of the "Blogosphere" and how Free Republic appears in this map. As far as I can tell, FR get's linked to or has links from? all these sites that we have a tie to...Red are conservative, Yellow are "InfoPits"? and Blue...the enemy...Go to the website and you can search on websites and vary the size of the display to achieve better resolution. Sorta fun to see...

In reading a small slice of the coverage of the AP - Drudge Retort contretemps it struck me that a lot of the more breathless coverage in the blogosphere stems from the rather larger misperception that one day last week, out of the blue, Rogers Cadenhead got slapped with a lawsuit by AP. As one of the few people who has seen all the legal documents in the case and has actually read the Digital Millennium Copyright Act I can see it would be wise for some folks to cool down and acquaint themselves with the rather prosaic facts in...

There are bloggers who present their calumny under the guise of “allegations,” applying evasive constructs like “some people are saying” or “it has been alleged.” Such writers are often well educated (sometimes with a law background), skilled at parsing words in order to avoid culpability for legal defamation. In this they rely for protection on the high standard of proof required to bring a libel action. Others recognize the evil in calumny, but see it as a compromise that must be made for the sake of a noble cause. They hope that by destroying an opponent’s reputation they will de-legitimize...

Mike Huckabee campaigns as religious Baptist. Yet how religious is Huck? Robert Novak, in the Washington Post, questions the depth of Huckabee’s Baptist support: More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the “conservative resurgence” that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago. Ann Coulter goes farther, and questions both Huckabee’s intelligence and sincerity of his supposed religous convictions. Hat Tip: Allah Pundit: Hot Air, Huckabee is a liberal Arkansas politician, who would be a democrat, if the party was not...

As regular VC readers know, I am one of several conspirators who is supporting Fred Thompson's campaign for President. I cannot speak for the others, but my reasons for supporting Thompson include his commitment to federalism, his candor on important issues other candidates would prefer to avoid (e.g. entitlements), and his record on regulatory reform and government oversight over the past thirty years. For National Review's pentultimate issue (the one before they endorsed Mitt Romney), I authored an article making the conservative case for Thompson. For those without subscriptions to the print magazine, here is an excerpt: Sen. Fred Thompson...

**Under pressure from outraged viewers, NBC has reversed its decision not to air the Freedom's Watch ads thanking troops... Developing...

Like noxious bugs swarming over a crumbling tenement, followers of Ron Paul have invaded the blogosphere. Their target is anyone who dares to criticize their hero. Bloggers have dealt with them in various ways. Some have tried banning them outright. Others allow readers to engage them in back-and-forth debates that can easily take a thread to several hundred responses. I used to find the Paulites annoying, but recently I had a revelation: Far from being scorned, Paul’s rabid fans should be welcomed and encouraged. We should do everything we can to make certain they keep pushing their man, sending him...

An article in USA Today touches on blogging among believing Christians, and remarks on the frequently combative nature of the posts: "For Christ's sake, stop!" declared the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Frank Page, pleading for civility in the Baptist blogosphere. Episcopalians and Anglicans duel incessantly over their faith and future in the Anglican Communion. Catholics focus on every topic from liturgy to law to spirituality. These are faith bloggers -- uncountable voices who contest, confess and consider religious beliefs, doctrines and denominational politics in their posts. Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may...

Right Wing News emailed more than 240 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to answer 8 questions about the 2008 candidates. The following 61 blogs responded: The Absurd Report, David All Group, AtlanticBlog, The American Princess, Betsy's Page, Bit's Blog, BizzyBlog, Blogs of War, Blonde Sagacity, Bluey Blog, Boi From Troy, Bookworm Room, Keith Burgess-Jackson, Cassy Fiano, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Cold Fury, Conservative Grapevine, Damian Penny, Dispatches from Blogblivion, Argghhhh!, Ed Driscoll, Eckernet, Musings, Fraters Libertas, Ian Schwartz, Jeff Gannon - A Voice of the New Media, Ghost of a Flea, (Michael) GOPUSA Northeast, (Hank) GOPUSA Northeast, GraniteGrok, Gocinatlanta, Guardian Watchblog,...

Roger L. Simon, last seen cavorting with Pajama clad babes on the floor of the BlogWorld convention like a latter day Hugh Hefner, sat down with Fred Thompson to discuss the Global War on Terror. Bob Owens, proprietor of the excellent Confederate Yankee blog, joined Roger in conducting the interview. I linked to this yesterday in my Republican race Q&A, but the interview itself merits a little post of its own. In no particular order, a few observations: 1) The long form interview allowed Fred to express his knowledge and thoughts on the war on terror. He was impressive. Believe...

The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much. What was needed, he argued, was robust debate. Lasch, a historian by training but a cultural critic by inclination, was writing in 1990, when the Internet was not yet a part of everyday life and bloggers did not exist. Bloggers now are everywhere among us, and no one asks if we don't need more full-throated advocacy on the Internet. The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an...

As last week's all-night lockdown in the state Senate ended without a budget, Sen. Tom McClintock thanked fellow conservatives on his daily blog for their calls and e-mails and proclaimed, "You've made a difference." By many accounts, so has the rock-ribbed Thousand Oaks Republican who during the current stalemate has reached out to the party faithful via the blogosphere and urged them to implore the Senate's 15 Republicans to hold firm. Railing against what he sees as profligate spending by Democrats is nothing new for McClintock, who during his 21 years in the Legislature has often been dismissed by critics...

It’s one thing to offer relevant criticisms of a candidate (or potential candidate), but making things up out of whole cloth is an obvious sign of desperation. From what I’ve seen, some people are desperately afraid of no one so much as Fred... I can’t remember where I first noticed somebody named “Jim Robinson” going after Fred, but thanks to the Oracle of Mountain View, it was not difficult to track his hilariously ineffective mau-mauing across the blogosphere... It may be a clue that “Jim Robinson” is almost surely stolen from Jim Robinson, the owner and operator of Free Republic....

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Outrage abounds in the "blogosphere" as a pair of Internet luminaries are lobbying for rules of behavior in the lawless world of online commentary. Internet publisher Tim O'Reilly, credited with coining the phrase "Web 2.0," and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales triggered torrents of vitriol by proposing a "Blogging Code of Conduct" to impose civility on the Internet. The idea came in the wake of anonymous death threats posted on the blog of author and speaker Kathy Sierra, O'Reilly's friend. "A culture is a set of shared agreements that allows us to live together," O'Reilly wrote in...

... I do not speak for all the US military -- I can tell you that it is MNF-I policy that we will consider bloggers who request an embed with our forces. I don't see much difference between mainstream media reporters and bloggers, from my perspective as the CPIC director. From my perspective, their requests are the same and the process to get them embedded is the same. MNF-I works with US Central Command and the Department of Defense on which reporters and which bloggers we should specifically reach out to, but in reality, we will consider requests from any...

Editorial written by summer Whenever I start writing something I hope can be appreciated by both sides of the aisle, it seems like my hope quickly fades, because of a bad situation I can’t ignore from one side, which more often than not is the liberal side. For example, FreeRepublic.com enforces a strict policy of not allowing a news headline to be discarded; but, over at Huff Post, they literally “eat” the press. When I surfed over to Huffington Post last night, I saw a front page news headline I hadn’t seen posted anywhere else, screaming about Jeb Bush. Apparently...

"McCain isn't a moderate; he's as conservative as they come and has little principle, otherwise he would have spoken out against the fiasco in Iraq..."