Free Republic

It has been documented countless times that journalists in Denmark (and many other countries) to a very large degree vote for parties to the left of the center. But a totally different picture emerges when looking at their non-professional colleagues in cyberspace. The weekly Mandag Morgen has published a survey which labels 19 out of the 20 most visited Danish political bloggers as conservative or leaning towards the political Right. To Kim Møller, who runs the most popular blog in this survey, Uriasposten.net, the result comes as no surprise, but is a natural result of the grossly lopsided coverage in...

WASHINGTON: Fred Thompson plays a district attorney on TV and, in real life, a commentator on the Internet — two roles that give him plenty of visibility for a presidential bid. In recent weeks, the former Tennessee senator, who is considering a run for the Republican nomination, has used conservative Web sites to opine about tax cuts, the Virginia Tech shootings, even the NFL draft. "Whenever I've seen one of those 'Gun-free Zone' signs," Thompson mused at National Review Online, "I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man...

In one week's time (from May 9th-14th) Pope Benedict will visit the most populace Catholic nation on earth: Brazil. It will be his most distant Apostolic journey by far, as is very evident from this map of the countries he has visited so far as Pontiff. AmericanPapist will be trying to give you the very best coverage St. Blogs has to offer. To help me do that, please feel free to email me links (especially to video and multimedia content). So, let's get to the expected highlights of Pope Benedict's visit: He will canonize the first Brazilian-born saint, Antonio...

Army clamping down on soldiers' blogs Wed May 2, 1:47 PM ET The U.S. Army is tightening restrictions on soldiers' blogs and other Web site postings to ensure sensitive information about military operations does not make it onto public forums.Soldiers in war zones are already subject to restrictions on blogging and public posts. But the Army's new regulation could affect service members who have returned from war zones and started blogs about their combat experiences.Under a new directive issued in April, soldiers must consult with their immediate supervisor and an officer responsible for what's known within the military as...

Two enterprising GOP staffers have come up with a conservative "alternative to YouTube," since, you know, it's YouTube's fault George Allen is a boob. They tell the that WT's Eric Pfeiffer, "We saw a need for a social-networking site for the center-right...They want something that isn't controlled by our good friends at Google." And here I thought you had to be in power to be paranoid. While I think this makes about as much sense as setting up a conservative "alternative to the internet" because DailyKos exists, I doubt if we've seen the last of this kind of fake technological...

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Via Noah Shachtman: The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say. Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some...

Cairo, 30 April (AKI) - The Egyptian Sand Monkey - one of the country's most popular and straight talking blogs - has closed down his site. In a farewell message, the blogger explained "that there has been too much heat around me lately," adding he feared for his anonymity with "State Security agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me." He went on to say that his bowing out was also due to changes in the Egyptian blogosphere, "too much media attention, too much hype," and the need for a period of reflection. The news of the farewell...

GamePolitics.com is reporting that United States District Judge Paul C. Huck has dismissed anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Gawker Media, the publisher of gaming blog Kotaku. Thompson had claimed that Kotaku and Gawker Media had failed to honor his requests to remove "threatening" comments from several of their blog posts that were critical of his eagerness to blame video games for the tragic Virginia Tech shootings earlier this month. On Wednesday, Thompson had added the blog publishing company, which also operates other popular blogs like Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Valleywag, to a list of defendants in a suit he...

BERKELEY, Calif. - Jane Stillwater is an unlikely war correspondent. She's 64, a self-described Berkeley "flower child, 40 years later" and broke. So how did this mother of four grown children end up in Baghdad, churning out commentary ranging from shock at Thursday's bombing of the Iraqi parliament cafeteria, to the weirdness of touring Saddam Hussein's bathroom? Inspired by a sense of outrage and determined to blog from inside the war zone, Stillwater ate peanut butter sandwiches for months to save up for a ticket to Kuwait. She got a small Texas newspaper to help her secure press accreditation, and...

National Journal ranks me as the most conservative member of Congress running for the Presidency based on my lifetime voting record. So, I don't need to hire an army of consultants to turn me into a conservative. My record hasn't changed since I was swept into office by the Reagan Revolution 26 years ago. In fact, someone recently pointed out to me that I have more experience in Congress than the top three Democratic candidates combined. I'm also a Vietnam veteran who served in the 173rd Airborne and 75th Army Rangers. I've been to Iraq five times, have a son...

In time for the Persian New Year, CBS's Melissa McNamara trawled the blogosphere (including MySpace blog entries) and found bloggers who think Iran's Islamic extremist government has a point about "300" being "anti-Persian." In doing she, she produced a handful of blogs that appear to generate light traffic and in at least one case is just a rambling screed. McNamara told readers that the "Islamic Republic News Agency" (IRNA) finds fault with the film's version of historical events. She left out that IRNA is Iran's official state-controlled news/propaganda service. CBSNews.com's resident "Blogophile" also noted objections from an Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri,...

Someone, somewhere created the very first Web log. It's just not quite clear who. It may not be one of the Internet's grandest accomplishments, but with the number of active bloggers hovering somewhere around 100 million, according to one estimate, there are some serious bragging rights to be claimed by the first person who provably laid fingers to keyboard in the traditional bloggy way. Was the first blogger the irascible Dave Winer? The iconoclastic Jorn Barger? Or was the first blogger really Justin Hall, a Web diarist and online gaming expert whom The New York Times Magazine once called the...

A poll released today by the Zogby organization, conducted in conjunction with the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, reveals that a vast majority of Americans believe that the media is biased. 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides. Of particular significance: "nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias." Other findings of interest: "97% of...

Michelle Malkin writes:Ann Coulter just finished her riff on Al Gore, tossed out some cute jokes ("You can understand why Hollywood is concerned about global warming. You know what heat does to plastic."), and ended with a cheap one-liner about John Edwards being a "faggot." (Paraphrasing) She said she would refrain from commenting on Edwards because "if you say faggot, you have to go to rehab." A smattering of laughter. Not from this corner. Crickets chirping.Flashback Last year's bomb about "ragheads." Bryan at Malkin's Hot Air:I’m no fan of John Edwards, but that’s just a stupid joke. It’s over the...

Fox News Channel is testing another pilot on Sunday that will air following its experiment in news satire, "The ½ Hour News Hour." "It's Out There," a half-hour of stories derived from blogs, will get a half-hour test run following Joel Surnow's satirical take on news. Show, fronted by conservative blogger-columnist Michele Malkin and former Clinton administration operative Kirsten Powers, will take on political and cultural issues enflaming the blogosphere. The first episode will look at John Edwards' virtual campaign HQ and other candidates using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to reach young voters. The pilot airs in...

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown. Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution, was a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. He also lashed out often at Al-Azhar - the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam - calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism. *snip* Nabil, wearing a gray T-shirt and...

Blogs such as NewsBusters are an "incredibly important" news medium whose influence will only continue to grow, a senior U.S. military official said today. Speaking from Baghdad, Major General William Caldwell, senior military spokesman in Iraq, made the remarks in the course of a conference call with bloggers in which this NewsBuster participated.Said MG Caldwell in closing remarks: "Thanks for what you all do. I've just been amazed. What an incredible addition you are in helping tell what's going on. You're an incredibly important news medium, From what I've seen, [blogs have been] growing in importance from last May until...

CAIRO, Egypt - Wael Abbas hasn't been arrested by Egyptian police, but the blogger fears it could happen any day. A democracy activist who never leaves home without a camera, he has drawn the attention of state security by posting videos that show what many Egyptians only talk about behind closed doors _ police brutality and male harassment of women on the street, such as fondling. Abbas is just part of a wave of Middle Eastern bloggers who are eroding tight government control on information and thus drawing intense scrutiny from police. Egyptian authorities arrested a string of prominent bloggers...

Blogs such as NewsBusters play a key role in helping the truth getting through the filter of the mainstream media. That was the view that Rear Admiral Mark Fox expressed to this blogger today. I had the opportunity to participate in a conference call for bloggers with RADM Fox, a Silver Star recipient who scored the first Navy MiG kill in Operation Desert Storm, and who now serves as the Communications Director for MNF-I in Baghdad. Given the chance to ask a question, I naturally focused, given NB's mission, on MSM coverage of the war.I cited to Admiral Fox the...

Blogs rule, newspapers creak Except ye olde 'papers retain access to Perry Thursday, February 01, 2007 Tooting itself a little, Texas Monthly this month trumpeted political bloggers over reporters for ye olde newspapers. Editor Evan Smith, referring to Rep. Tom Craddick's fight for re-election as speaker, wrote that bloggers — including the magazine's Paul Burka — excelled in tracking the fray. "Even more than the old-media fuddies in the Capitol press corps, they broke news, spun with style, and made themselves into must-reads," Smith said. Few would argue with newspapers as old or with the vigor of political blogs. On...