Free Republic

Time for the last post By Trevor Butterworth Published: February 17 2006 14:01 | Last updated: February 17 2006 21:54 On a winter-cold morning last autumn, before the leaves could summon up the energy to burn and fall, the barbarians entered the gate. A group of feisty young writers, known only to millions of readers by their blog names - Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette and Defamer - were in a soigne studio in New York’s Chelsea district to be photographed for the February issue of Vanity Fair magazine. ADVERTISEMENT They represented the cream of Gawker Media - a mini-empire of clever,...

Bloggers Battle Over Cheney Misfire (Feb. 18) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's weekend misfire brought verbal combat to a boil between left- and right-leaning bloggers. The Kenedy County Sheriff's Department has closed its investigation into Cheney's accidental shooting of hunting pal Harry Whittington and issued a report that largely supports the vice president's account of the weekend's events. But that hasn't stopped the shooting in cyberspace, where liberal bloggers were particularly riled up over the role alcohol might have played in the mishap. Many bloggers on the left also smelled a cover up, while many right-leaning bloggers said it was...

Well that didn't take long. While Muslim religious extremists are rioting in the streets of Beirut, Gaza City and Kabul, Scandinavian embassies are being torched and Jordanians are deprived of their Danish feta over cartoons that were never actually published in any legitimate newspaper, the right-wing blogosphere has been staging its own "blogburst": the act of reproducing the offending depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. It's a "simultaneous, co-ordinated posting by a large group of webmasters and bloggers on a given topic," says Israpundit who, along with Michelle Malkin, who is like Ann Coulter but not as funny and not so...

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (AP) - He didn't have to go, it wasn't his job and nobody paid him to do it. But Michael Yon says he went to Iraq because he wanted to see for himself what was happening in the war zone. The 41-year-old former Green Beret and author was embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last year and used an Internet blog to report on car bombs, firefights and fallen soldiers. He also wrote about acts of compassion and heroism, small triumphs in the country's crawl toward democracy and the gritty inner workings of the military. Yon's...

THE LEFT TO DEMS: WE HATE YOU [Byron York] Now that the Alito filibuster has collapsed, the anger -- anger at Democrats, that is -- is boiling over at the DailyKos. One diatribe from one of the site's "recommended diaries": What I want is a complete list of every scumsucking f--kstick Democratic a--hole senator who voted for cloture. That's what I want. I don't know what to DO with that list, not yet -- but I know for G--DAMNED sure I won't be VOTING for any of them, let alone sending them any g--damned MONEY. Frankly, right now I'd like...

Winter Haven, Fla. -- He didn't have to go, it wasn't his job and nobody paid him to do it. But Michael Yon says he went to Iraq because he wanted to see for himself what was going on. The 41-year-old former Army Green Beret, self-published author and world traveler didn't know exactly what he was going to do when he got to the war zone last year, nor did he have any particular plans to report what he saw to the world at-large. But that's what he did. After getting himself embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last...

He didn't have to go, it wasn't his job and nobody paid him to do it. But Michael Yon says he went to Iraq because he wanted to see for himself what was going on. The 41-year-old former Army Green Beret, self-published author and world traveler didn't know exactly what he was going to do when he got to the war zone last year, nor did he have any particular plans to report what he saw to the world at-large. But that's what he did. After getting himself embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last year, he used his...

Jimmy VandeHei is a quick study. In an Op Ed in the Washington Post this Saturday ( Blogs Attack From Left) he has reached the astonishing conclusion that "liberal Web logs" and the Internet have become "a powerful political force" with the Democratic Party these days. Where has Mr. VandeHei been? Here is the laugh line from VandeHei's Op Ed: "Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a...

Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center By Jim VandeHei Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 28, 2006; A06 Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience. These activists -- spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns -- have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush's upcoming State...

Liberal commentator Deborah Howell found out what happens when you don't follow liberal orthodoxy as a columnist: you get eaten alive.

'Wash Post' Ombud Vows to Stay on Job Despite Uproar Deborah Howell By E&P Staff Published: January 22, 2006 12:45 AM ET NEW YORK Responding to the furor that started exactly one week ago, Deborah Howell, ombudsman at The Washington Post since just last autumn, writes today, "Nothing in my 50-year career prepared me for the thousands of flaming e-mails I got last week over my last column, e-mails so abusive and many so obscene that part of The Post's Web site was shut down." As Howell notes, that column claimed that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave campaign money to...

Nothing in my 50-year career prepared me for the thousands of flaming e-mails I got last week over my last column, e-mails so abusive and many so obscene that part of The Post's Web site was shut down. That column praised The Post for breaking the story on lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings, for which he has pleaded guilty to several felony counts. The column clearly pointed out that Abramoff is a Republican and dealt mainly with Republicans, most prominently former House majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas. I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members...

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey, who resigned from office in 2004 after acknowledging a gay affair, has written a blog with gay rights activist and author David Mixner. Their first topic was about efforts to combat poverty in McDowell County, W.Va., and focused on the odyssey of one local woman who survived two battered marriages and now is part of that work. "The Amazing Marsha Timpson" is a five-part article that runs to nearly 9,000 words on www.huffingtonpost.com, a news and opinion Web site launched last year by political commentator Arianna Huffington, a onetime candidate for California governor. Timpson said...

Associated Press The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans. At the center of a congressional bribery investigation, Abramoff gave money to Republicans while he had his clients donate to both parties, though mostly to Republicans. In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog. There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's...

Paper Shutters Blog After Ombudsman Post Jan 19 7:28 PM US/Eastern WASHINGTON The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans. At the center of a congressional bribery investigation, Abramoff gave money to Republicans while he had his clients donate to both parties, though mostly to Republicans. In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on...

The Washington Post shut one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman. The closing was the second by a major newspaper in recent months. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site. The Post's blog, open to the public since Nov. 21, was shut indefinitely yesterday afternoon with a notice from Jim Brady, executive editor of www.washingtonpost.com. Mr. Brady wrote that...

But wait! All is not lost. The remaining comments are not gone where Deborah Howell tried to blink them out of existence. Surprise, surprise, surprise! (Gomer style). They just went somewhere else where you have to dig to find them. You can now find those mass-deleted comments that are now cached in Yahoo search (January 17 th- 18th WaPo blog comments) while Democratic Underground has the January 19th comments archived here, and WaPo Lies have the January 15th - 16th comments archived. Those bots really do work fast. Deborah Howell simply didn't move fast enough. And funnier still, I don't...

Confessions of a Blogger… I have to confess that I have been chosen to deliver an address at the upcoming convention for center-right Bloggers, Blogging Man 2007. The news of this gathering has come out too early. The Internet holds no secret for long, obviously. Within a week or so of the organizer's efforts to begin to line up speakers for their convention, the news began to spread like wildfire and the organizers were deluged with emails asking about the event and Blogs began rumor-mongering about it. So, the event advertising on the Net was launched months too early. And,...

The Editors Discuss Site Policies, Design and Goals Posted at 04:22 PM ET, 01/19/2006 Comments Turned Off As of 4:15 p.m. ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely. At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues. Among the things that we knew would be part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com. We knew a lot of that discussion would...

NEW YORK Jim Brady, the executive editor at washingtonpost.com, notified users of the post.blog that the public comment feature had been suspended “indefinitely” after “a significant number of folks” posted personal attacks, profanity, and hate speech. Attempts by E&P to reach Brady have been unsuccessful so far. It seems likely the move is related to controversy in recent days over Sunday’s Post column by ombudsman Deobrah Howell. She has been heavily criticized by some political Web sites and bloggers for writing that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both political parties, when most research shows he only gave directly...