Free Republic

In a bow to the rise of Internet-era secrets hidden in plain view, the agency has started hosting Web logs with the latest information on topics including North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's public visit to a military installation -- his 38th this year -- and the Burmese media's silence on a ministry reshuffling. It even has a blog on blogs, dedicated to cracking the code of what useful information can be gleaned from the rapidly expanding milieu of online journals and weird electronic memorabilia warehoused on the Net. The blogs are posted on an unclassified, government-wide Web site, part...

'NY Times' Sunday Preview: Conservative Blogs Rock! By E&P Staff Published: December 09, 2005 10:05 AM ET NEW YORK In an argument sure to be challenged in certain sectors of the blogosphere, a story in The New York Times magazine coming up this Sunday declares that conservative blogs continue to best liberal blogs in political and electoral influence. The title of the piece by Michael Crowley in the magazine’s 5th Annual Year in Ideas cover package says it all: “Conservative Blogs Are More Effective.” Crowley, a New Republic writer, claims that with the 2006 elections approaching, Democrats are now “trying...

RedState is currently trailing a lefty blog, TPMcafe, in the balloting. No lefty blog should be allowed to win this. Vote early. Vote often (you can vote once per day until December 15; that is not considered cheating). http://weblogawards.org/2005/12/best_group_blog.php

Update on FReeper DoctorZin's nomination and voting Want to thank everyone for their votes. DoctorZin went from 5th place to 2nd in a matter of hours after FReepers went to the polls yesterday! DoctorZin is doing great work reporting the news on Iran and further recognition will help spread the news and important information on Iran. Competition for 1st place is very tough, as it is being held by last year's Annual Weblog Awards winner. (Iraq the Model) Please vote for DoctorZin's blog, "Regime Change Iran" at http://weblogawards.org/2005/12/best_middle_east_or_africa_blo.php Let's FReep this election! And remember, you can vote every 24hrs. from...

FReeper DoctorZin's blog, 'Regime Change Iran', has been nominated as a finalist for the Best Middle East blog in the Annual Weblog Awards.     You may vote once a day until Dec. 15th   Vote Here!   http://weblogawards.org/2005/12/best_middle_east_or_africa_blo.php   Vote early, Vote Often!

Time to vote!

Time to vote! Unless you want KOS to win!

The debate about old-versus-new media can get a bit heavy. Meet the bloggers who are getting their own back, and having a laugh. "But there isn't any rule against copying stuff off a website, is there?" So pleaded The Daily Mail when caught red-handed back in 2002, having run a feature called Blue Peter Saints & Sinners. The editorial process at the Mail turned out to be: a visit to nostalgia site TV Cream; a use of the "cut" and "paste" features found in web browsers and desktop publishers; then hiding when they got found out.... Happily, a sense of...

In our recent awards ceremony honoring the Freepers, people who post comments and articles on the FreeRepublic website, Accuracy in Media was demonstrating an understanding of the power of new media. We cannot let the Big Media monopolize the concept of journalism. When we honored Harry MacDougald and Paul Boley with the Reed Irvine Investigative Journalism award, we were recognizing that ordinary citizens can be journalists, too. Unfortunately, the sponsors of the so-called Free Flow of Information Act, or the federal media shield bill, do not understand this critical fact. In an October 10 article by Mark Fitzgerald on the...

The Federal Election Commission today issued an advisory opinion that finds the Fired Up network of blogs qualifies for the "press exemption" to federal campaign finance laws. The press exemption, as defined by Congress, is meant to assure "the unfettered right of the newspapers, TV networks, and other media to cover and comment on political campaigns." The full ruling is available at the FEC site. A noteworthy passage: "...an entity otherwise eligible for the press exception would not lose its eligibility merely because of a lack of objectivity..."

A year ago, Jonathan Klein, current president of CNN, airily dismissed the bloggers who dethroned Dan Rather. "These bloggers have no checks and balances... You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [at 60 Minutes] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Of course, it wasn't so long ago (25 years, to be exact) that CNN was the new media outlet on the block. And the neighborhood kids turned their noses up at Ted Turner's brainchild. Broadcast newshound Sam Donaldson derided CNN as the "Chicken Noodle Network." Time, you...

Suppose a Democratic strategist wrote an open letter to colleagues and clients analyzing this week’s election returns. “Republicans have very little to cheer about this election,” he said with some satisfaction. “But off-year elections are rarely harbingers of future performance. Democrats actually did quite well in 2003, to little effect in 2004.” Suppose further that the Democratic strategist signed his name to the letter and distributed it widely.And then suppose one more thing: that the Democratic strategist had not actually written those words but had lifted them wholesale from a liberal blog. (In fact, those words do come from such...

WITHIN minutes of her nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, White House Counsel Harriet Miers was the subject of a blogs warm of disappointed conservatives who immediately launched an effort to force her to withdrawal her own nomination. NationalReview.com's group blogs "The Corner" and "Bench Memos," the blog ConfirmThem.com and the posters at FreeRepublic.com kept up a steady stream of criticism, much of it serious and thoughtful, some of it thuggish and false.

Pajamas Media had its beginnings in 2004, when co-founders Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon experienced first-hand two events that marked the growing influence of blogs on society: a blog-driven investigation into the United Nations Oil for Food scandal and another into the falsified military records cited by CBS News in coverage of President George W. Bush. From those and other blogging experiences, Roger and Charles knew there was enough expertise and investigative ability among bloggers nationally and globally to out-report the mainstream media on turf they had long controlled. The two Los Angeles co-founders were already friends via their...

Apparently the Online Freedom of Speech Act failed to pass in the House of Representatives tonight. I infer this from a statement we got a few minutes ago from Minnesota Congressman Mark Kennedy, a leading proponent of free speech, including free speech on the web. Mark writes: I'm horribly disappointed that this important measure failed to pass. This bill was designed to protect the free speech rights of Americans whose only alleged crime is wanting to use the Internet to express their opinions. I disagree with the mainstream media elites who seem to think that an unregulated media is dangerous,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Online political expression should not be exempt from campaign finance law, the House decided Wednesday as lawmakers warned that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections. The House voted 225-182 for a bill that would have excluded blogs, e-mails and other Internet communications from regulation by the Federal Election Commission. That was 47 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed under a procedure that limited debate time and allowed no amendments. The vote in effect clears the way for the FEC to move ahead with court-mandated rule-making to govern political speech...

WASHINGTON - Beltway politicos, famously slow to adopt technology, are wooing blogs - all but Trent Lott. "Bloggers claim I was their first pelt, and I believe that. I'll never read a blog," says the former Senate majority leader, who forfeited that title after bloggers Joshua Micah Marshall and Glenn Reynolds picked up a racially charged remark, drawing the attention of mainstream media (MSM) and his Senate colleagues. Blogs (short for web logs) are websites that can be as basic as an online diary, or as fully fledged as a political community. And when the latter variety seizes upon a...

What Blogs Cost American Business In 2005, Employees Will Waste 551,000 Work Years Reading ThemBy Bradley Johnson LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age's analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- bloggers essentially take a daily...

NEW JERSEY — An administrator at a private high school has threatened students with suspension unless they erased all personal profiles and blogs from the Internet. Rev. Kieran McHugh, Principal of Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, N.J. banned students from accessing social networking sites such as MySpace.com, citing student safety as his primary concern, according to the Daily Record, a newspaper serving the northern New Jersey community. Web sites such as MySpace.com allow users to post biographical information and pictures in personal profiles. These profiles help users communicate with others who share similar interests. "I don't see...

T here's been a lot of excitement about blogs since they broke into public consciousness during the 2004 election. They are now growing at an astronomical rate. The blog search engine Technorati now tracks almost 20 million of them, and various estimates of the number of blog users range from 32 million to 50 million Americans. Blogophiles see blogs as a new way for citizens to express themselves and, especially among the political bloggers, a new way for citizens to talk back to the "MSM" -- the mainstream media. According to Mike Godwin, legal director of a First Amendment advocacy...