Free Republic

About four years ago, I became extremely disturbed at overhearing conversations my grandchildren were having at a large family gathering – conversations that were obviously being fueled by poisonous attitudes being inculcated in them about America by their public school teachers. I wrote them a letter as a first step in a campaign to try to undo the harm being done to them and to their country. That letter developed into an e-mail discussion group – and then into a weblog. To read the letter, go to my site and enter the words - to my grandchildren - in the...

High court to hear blog suit; Smyrna councilman claims anonymous defamation By Drew Volturo, Delaware State News DOVER — A lawsuit seeking to identify anonymous posters to an Internet Web log will be decided in the Delaware Supreme Court, a case some say could set precedents for free speech online. The case, filed last year by Smyrna Town Councilman Patrick J. Cahill and his wife Julia, alleges that four anonymous posters to a community issues blog "defamed" the councilman and his wife in late 2004. Blogs are electronic public forums that allow residents to post their ideas, opinions and comments...

WASHINGTON — Free speech advocates are frustrated with a host of American companies they say have been collaborating with oppressive regimes in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to help them filter and monitor the Internet activity of their citizens. Big technology names like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco have been criticized roundly in recent years for providing foreign governments with the tools they need to crack down on Internet use, but critics say they have not been able to do much more than complain. "These companies' lack of ethics is extremely worrisome," said Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative of...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iran has among the strictest Internet censorship in the world, blocking access to sexual content, political websites, information on women's rights and "blogs," a study by Internet researchers showed. The OpenNet Initiative, a partnership of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Toronto and University of Cambridge, noted that Iran uses technology from the US company, Secure Computing, calling the firm "complicit" in the censorship. But they said that Internet content controls "have support at the highest levels of the Iranian state." The researchers found some 34 percent of tested websites blocked. "The Iranian state has effectively...

Internet censorship is increasingly common, says technology commentator Bill Thompson, but making small gains in freedom may be enough. "We shouldn't be surprised to learn that the Chinese authorities have finally turned their attention to weblogs and decided that they have to be censored. After all, a government that has put so much effort into controlling the free flow of information was hardly going to ignore a publishing tool that is easily accessible by 78 million net users. Now anyone in China who wants to blog has until 30 June to register or face criminal sanctions, and according to the...

CITIZEN WEB: Blogs, Political Websites Broaden S.C. Media By Dan Cook Mike Green is a staunch conservative, but he isn’t too pleased with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham these days. “I am a Republican, I voted for Lindsey Graham, I even campaigned for him in Greenville,” Green asserts. But Graham’s work toward brokering a compromise in the Senate fight over President Bush’s judicial nominees has Green reeling, and on May 20 — four days before Graham joined with Senate moderates to avoid a showdown — Green declares himself “hopping mad” over Graham’s reluctance to push for ending the Democrats’ ability to...

On May 19, 2002, police in Henderson County, North Carolina investigated an incident where a rock had been thrown off an overpass damaging a rig traveling on Interstate 26. Earlier that day, Gerald Velardi had written in his weblog "I'm going to trash some s**t tonight, maybe my damage will be shown on the news." Velardi was arrested for the crime of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and sentenced to no less than two years in prison. At trial, the prosecutor brought up Velardi's weblog during cross examination. On appeal, Velardi argued that this evidence was...

By ELLEN SIMON, AP Technology Writer GREENSBORO, N.C. - It's a journalist's job to ask questions, but they're usually aimed at outsiders. At the News & Record, a 93,000-daily circulation newspaper in Greensboro, reporters and editors are asking tough questions about the paper itself. The biggest questions: If the paper needs to change to survive, what changes should be made? What can it do, especially online, to make itself the electronic equivalent of a town square? Seeking the answers, the paper has launched an audacious online experiment. The News & Record's Web site features 11 staff-written Web journals, or blogs,...

Going into the 2004 election cycle, just about everyone said the Internet was going to change politics. But no one was sure how. Now we know. The first signs of change came from the Howard Dean campaign. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi, used the Internet, and meetup.com and moveon.org to identify and bring together Bush-haters from all over the country, and raise far more money than anyone expected. ....The right blogosphere's greatest triumph came after CBS' Dan Rather reported that Bush had shirked duty in the National Guard and the network posted its 1972-dated documents on the Web. Within four...

(New York, January 6, 2005) -- After testifying to a presidential commission about their torture during detention, a group of Iranian journalists have received death threats from judicial officials under Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch is extremely concerned about the safety of the journalists, whose testimony to a presidential commission, tasked with investigating mistreatment of detainees, provided detailed information on their torture and mistreatment while they were detained, without being charged, by secret squads operating under the authority of the judiciary. “We want the Iranian government to know that the world is...

Leftists Stealing Votes That Don't (Really) Count? In a matter of only hours, two left wing blogs - Kos and Atrios - went from the bottom of the pack of blogs and suddenly pulled ahead by a pretty fat margin in the Best Overall Blog category in the Wizbang Weblog Awards. I have a deep suspicion that (ahemm) someone rigged the poll. There is a huge possiblity that someone could have nixed the system, and after roaming at Kos and Atrios, Atrios hasn't even advertised himself in the Weblog Awards! I humbly ask that Mr. Alyward, chairman of the Election...

Sunday, December 5th, 2004Vote 'A.B.G.' (Anyone But Gleeson)Dear Friends,Sorry I haven't written anything on my site for a month. I've been wallowing in sorrow (and chili cheese fries) over the stolen 2004 election.Is stolen too strong a word? I think not. Consider this map of Ohio, the state which saved Bush's bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.I'm sorry, what was I saying? Read that back to me. Ohio, right.That map, my friends, proves no fewer than 67,148 counts of people having to wait in line to vote. Sometimes, in the rain. And when they finally reached the polls, at least 29 were...

Sean Gleeson gets my vote for the 2004 Weblog Awards for his now famous Scooby-Rather cartoon. If you agree, visit the link above and vote for "The Gleeson Bloglomerate." If you haven't seen it yet, here it is again...

My research partner Barbara Kaye and I are professors at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We are conducting an online survey that examines the motivations for accessing the Web, weblogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards and other Internet resources for political information. Our survey has been approved by the University of Tennessee institutional review board and is being conducted for academic purposes only. We are specifically looking for individuals who connect to online political information to fill out our survey. Survey URL: http://apps.ws.utk.edu/politics

Sometimes success can spoil a good thing. A soldier with the Stryker brigade in Iraq who posted riveting online accounts of combat in Iraq has apparently made his last post, abruptly closing a Website that drew an untold number of readers. CBFTW—the pseudonym of the online diarist, an enlisted soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team—won a following for his frank, profane and often funny take on the life of a soldier in Iraq. He chronicled the tedium of a lengthy deployment and the occasional moments of sheer terror, including a vicious, but largely unpublicized,...

As the title says, I was wondering if anyone has a list of conservative web logs by people at the Republican National Convention, or by those who have sources behind the scenes at the events. TIA.

BAGHDAD — A year ago, few Iraqis had ever had access to a computer, much less used it to communicate to the outside world. Now, Internet cafes seemingly dot every block in Baghdad, and new ones open often. That has led to a new phenomenon here: bloggers. "We suffered for years under Saddam Hussein, not being able to speak out," says Omar Fadhil, 24, a dentist. "Now, you can make your voice heard around the world."

Stephen Yellin posts a minutiae-filled analysis of Senate, House and gubernatorial races across the country almost weekly on Daily Kos, the most-trafficked liberal political blog on the Net. Other posters laud his thoroughness and debate his conclusions. He has landed a spot as a political operative with a major Democratic presidential nominee. He's walked precincts, volunteered for campaigns and run for office. He is also 15 years old -- too young to drive to his local polling station, let alone cast a vote there. Yellin is just a sophomore in high school, but in the blogosphere he is already a...

<p>On a modest street in the flats of Berkeley there's a little yellow bungalow behind a shabby fence. It's one of those places you expect to find a pit bull, but instead you find a bright young mayor of a city of about 70,000 liberal activists, writers, kibitzers, kidders and some folks who clearly have a lot of time on their hands.</p>

Google, the world's largest search engine, is being deliberately thwarted by an orchestrated campaign of Bush hating bloggers. Google operates on a set of established algorithms, which rank pages on how other web pages refer to it via links, which is why this juvenile campaign has worked to the point where you can type "Miserable Failure" in, hit "I Feel Lucky" and go to the White House Biography of President Bush. A new low surely, but sadly this campaign season, not unexpected. I would suggest letting Google know that its search engine is being deliberately manipulated by those who must...