Free Republic

With his clenched fists, wild eyes and gnashing teeth he has become the face of Muslim fury, protesting against the enemies of Islam. Shakeel Ahmad Bhat has been on the frontline of political activism in Srinagar, India, for more than a decade. His constant presence, captured by photographers and beamed across the world, has caught the imagination of rightwing bloggers who have dubbed him Islamic Rage Boy and turned him into an internet phenomenon. Typing his nickname into a search engine yields more than 75,000 results. He has inspired a cartoon character and merchandise. But the 30-year-old Kashmiri activist is...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 5 — For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and one of the world’s most famous businessmen. The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley’s overall aura of excess.

CHICAGO - Liberal bloggers can count the ways they are making their presence felt in the presidential race. More than 1,500 bloggers are expected this weekend at the second YearlyKos Convention, which has about 70 sponsors, including unions and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Credentials to cover the event total about 250. The most telling number, however, is seven — as in seven of the eight Democratic candidates were scheduled to address the convention on Saturday, including top-tier candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Sen. Joe Biden will be in his home state promoting his recently published...

Last September, I wrote an article entitled Top Down Right-Wing Blogosphere Growing Powerful, that argued the anti-community nature of right-wing blogs was allowing them relatively greater message discipline than left wing blogs and a superior ability to influence the content of the national media.

Noted Foreign-Policy Analyst Matthew R. Malcolm has begun a new blog, hosted at http://madmattparadise.blogspot.com The new blog will focus on current events, both pertaining to domestic politics and international news. This geopolitical commentator blends a touch of humor with in-depth analysis. The blog began in earnest this week, with daily postings so far focusing on "A PR Victory in the War on Terror" as well as predictions about the 2008 Presidential Race, which Malcolm seems certain of, as well as an entry about religious freedom in the Middle-East. Check out the blog at http://madmattparadise.blogspot.com

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...

Illegal immigrant ice cream vendors might be spreading leprosy in Manassas. Prince William County has been infiltrated by "unassimilated marxist radicals." Manassas Park police covered up the predations of five Hispanic men who gang-raped a woman in the street in June. These claims, among others, have been made in recent months by Greg Letiecq, whose popular blog, Black Velvet Bruce Li, offers "Blog-Fu for Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park politics" -- often making up in passion what it lacks in proof.

Just published on his blog which routinely spews anti-American and hatred that sometimes rises to the level of treason, the atheistic Kos himself made the following statement: "One more note before I move on to more important things. YearlyKos will be addressed this year by just about the entire Democratic Party leadership -- Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin. It will feature a candidate forum of all the top Democratic candidates -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson. It will also be addressed by other notable elected Democrats like Montana...

If our enemies don't hate us, it's an oversight. The confluence of the worst of modern American trends -- national narcissism, the sexualization of all things animate and otherwise, and the devaluing of currencies from literature to public discourse -- has reached a perfect storm of idiocy in the form of MTV-style political videos. Can the culture possibly go any lower before the barbarians simply waltz through America's front door, left lazily ajar by the last one to shake her booty? The videos are the latest rage in virtual politics: Pouty girls in scant clad bump 'n' grind their luv...

In 1945 the NAZI government of Germany’s Third Reich surrendered, unconditionally, to the Allies. The war for Europe was over, and just beginning. Sixty-two years later we, the United States of America, still have troops stationed on German soil. We are there not there as an occupying force, but as allies against a nebulous threat that may or may not arise. In the summer of 2003 the coalition forces led by the United States overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. His government was abolished. Hussein was later found, tried, and executed by a jury of his peers. The Iraqi people...

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....

This teen has made disagreeing with his parents a money-making venture. BROOKFIELD — A township teenager has been participating in online blogging for the past six years and recently took a step toward using his blogs for activism. Justin Higgins hopes to rally his generation around politics and current events. News, politics, opinion and discussion are all over the Internet, and it seems almost anyone can post thoughts on any topic in online forums. Higgins, now 17, was searching blog sites after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He was looking for anything that anyone had to say about...

Political activism on the Internet -- and in the so-called blogosphere, in particular -- has long been considered a liberal stronghold. But conservative bloggers show increasing signs of their own coming of age. They took a major leap forward by playing a central role in scuttling the Senate immigration bill. Meanwhile, many of the most popular talk-radio hosts are now posting on blogs, and the frequent collaboration of the two media is creating a unified conservative voice that is likely to be an important factor in the 2008 elections. One example: Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator, was...

Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, “The Cult of the Amateur,” Web 2.0 has a dark side as well. Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is...

The Wall Street Journal says the Republicans' prospects for 2008 are looking "dim," with Americans giving the GOP "their most negative assessment in the two-decade history" of the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Maybe this will help: As the Politico reports, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has come up with a 39-page playbook to teach GOP candidates how to weather the not-so-new new-media world. "Rapid response and explanation of a position or vote to friendly blogs can ensure center-right solidarity behind your defense," the playbook says. "The paradigmatic example of the failure to do is the 'macaca' moment. Conservative blogs,...

As far as American voters are concerned, former senator Fred Thompson is already in the race for the Republican presidential nomination

Tried in an open court in which video footage of the crime was shown, an Egyptian police officer was convicted of sexually assaulting and torturing an Egyptian driver. [Imad Abdel Karim was detained in Bulak al Dakrur station 18the January 2006]. As I read about it, I could not help but feel admiration for the Egyptian bloggers who took up the case, disclosing and highlighting many facts including prison torture, all of which they actively launched a broad campaign against. Despite various crackdowns on bloggers in which they were subjected to bans, physical assault, detention î º and a four-year sentence...

SEARCH “blog,” “blogger” or “blogging” on the Indeed.com job board and more than 13,000 jobs come up. But narrow the search to job titles containing those words and the opportunities dwindle to just over 50. The bottom line is this: while running a Web log is a skill that more and more employers seek in their employees, finding full-time work in that world is still unusual. Blogs, short for Web logs, tend to be informal journals that track a subject on a regular basis. The topics are varied, and personal observations are often included. But as blogs have matured, they...

It was a Perry Mason moment updated for the Internet age. As Ivy League-educated pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman sat on the stand in Suffolk Superior Court this month, defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of a 12-year-old patient, the opposing counsel startled him with a question. Was Lindeman Flea? Flea, jurors in the case didn't know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day

As if he hasn't teased voters enough about his likely presidential bid, TV's Fred Thompson is now blogging for support and hinting that his backers will soon hear more about his plans. He went up on the Pajamas Media site this week to thank supporters for giving him six victories in the PJM Presidential Straw Polls. "So," he blogged, "I hear you all have been talking about me." Referring to the poll, the former Tennessee senator said, "The Pajamas Media poll is certainly good news, especially when, for a lot of politicians, encouragement to run from three relatives and an...