Free Republic

Despite the news media's fascination with the so-called blogosphere, a national survey has found that only about one in eight American adults currently uses Internet blogs to get news and information. But these Web logs - personal diaries and observations posted on easy-to-update Internet Web pages in a process called "blogging" - are much more popular among certain demographic groups. A survey of 1,010 adult residents of the United States by the Scripps Survey Research Center of Ohio University found that nearly a quarter of young adults say they read blogs at least once a week, compared to just 3...

Q: Are bloggers too powerful? A: Do I think they're important? Yes. Do I think the [bloggers] and Al Sharpton alone are the future of the Democratic Party? No! Welcome in, contribute, but it's about winning in November and moving the country forward, not about a firing squad in a circle. -- Q&A with U.S. representative Rahm Emanuel, Aug. 28th issue of New York magazine I badly want to move on to another topic in this column space -- there is very little in the world that is less interesting than the Democratic Leadership Council and their ilk -- but...

Is Kos Really the Kingmaker? He says no. But if Joe Lieberman loses his Senate primary and jeopardizes a Democratic seat, the leading liberal blogger knows that he will be blamed

Mr. Johnson, one of the most influential, popular, and disliked political bloggers in the United States, says his site offers an "alternative filter": The news comes in and something approaching the truth comes out. Critics, however, say he has an agenda of his own - one that's anti-Muslim, pro-Israel, and full of hate. How did this 50-something computer programmer and Web designer turn into an Internet celebrity, sought out by CNN and regularly roasted by liberal critics? The answer lies in expertise, diligence, and imagination. This week, his website - littlegreenfootballs.com - is attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, thanks...

Right Wing News emailed more than 225 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a list of whom they considered to be their "Favorite People On The Right." Representatives from the following 51 blogs responded... The Absurd Report, Ankle Biting Pundits, The Anchoress, And Rightly So, Argghhhh!, AtlanticBlog, Bad Example, Betsy's Page, Bit's Blog, Blackfive, Blue Crab Boulevard, Boi From Troy, Brainster's Blog, The Club For Growth Blog, Damian Penny, dcthornton.com, Don Surber, Ed Driscoll, Election Projection, Euphoric Reality, Drumwaster's Rants, Guardian Watchblog, Hog Haven, Isaac Schrödinger, Kung Fu Quip, GOPUSA Northeast, Newmark's Door, IMAO, Iowa Voice, Knowledge Is...

August 7, 2006 -- A group led by venture capital firm Softbank is investing $5 million in the Huffington Post, an online news site and political blog owned by the pundit Arianna Huffington, The Post has learned. The investment comes a little over a year after the launch of the Huffington Post - which then was billed as a celebrity-filled blog but has since evolved in to its own news brand. An announcement of the investment could come as soon as today. In addition to Softbank, venture capitalist Alan Patricof is also investing in the site, as well as some...

<p>A Reuters employee has been suspended after sending a death threat to an American blogger.</p> <p>The message, sent from a Reuters internet account, read: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."</p> <p>It was sent to Charles Johnson, owner of the Little Green Footballs (LGF) weblog, a popular site which often backs Israel and highlights jihadist terrorist activities.</p>

The more time I spend in the blogopshere, the more it seems to me that many blogs are merely online cults. It's an easy comparison to make. Notice, for example, that blog audiences simply do not cross over. Most people who read and contribute to Free Republic stay away from DailyKos, and vice-versa. Once in a while, some brave soul wanders over to a rival blog, as it were, and is invariably banned by the owners of that blog; more rarely, there is a full-fledged flame war in which members of rival boards virtually invade each other's territory with the...

Senator Lieberman was on a roll, skewering Ned Lamont, his wealthy antiwar opponent in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Connecticut, for owning stock in the military contractor Halliburton. But within days, Lieberman was having to explain his own investments. An online blog called Firedoglake revealed that Lieberman owned shares in mutual funds that held Halliburton stock. Other blogs latched onto the July 20 item, Lamont aides alerted reporters and soon it had found its way into local newspapers, tempering Mr. Lieberman’s attack. This was one example of how the Lamont campaign tried to harness the energy, anger and muckraking zeal of...

J.P. Borda started a Web log during his 2004 National Guard deployment in Afghanistan to keep in touch with his family. But when he got home, he decided it was the mainstream media that was out of touch with the war. "You hear so much about what's going wrong," he says. "It gets hard to hear after a while when there's so much good going on." Mr. Borda, a specialist, read other soldiers' blogs and found he wasn't alone. Hundreds of other troops and veterans were blogging world-wide, and many focused on a common enemy: journalists. The 31-year-old software analyst,...

***scroll for updates: the moonbat 'fesses up, loses her job?***Jeff Goldstein, who has been such an inspiration and good friend ever since I started blogging, is under attack. He--and his toddler son--have been the subject of abuse and harassment from a nutball leftist troll, who appears to hold a prominent teaching position at the University of Arizona and seems to have a history of abusing and stalking blogs. Some of the messages she left for Jeff: "I’d like to hear more about your “tyke” by the way. Girl? Boy? Toddler? Teen? Are you still married to the woman you...

Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt marries the power of talk radio with the reach of the 'netroots.' Watch out, Kos. July 3-10, 2006 issue - Hugh Hewitt is a master of multitasking. Week after week, the sanguine, persistent pundit hosts his "center-right" talk radio show from a nondescript office in Orange County, Calif.—and more than a million people tune in. Two computers flank his mike. While on the air, Hewitt uses the first to surf news sites, then swivels to the second during breaks to update his well-trafficked blog. "Both spoken words and written words are powerful," he says. "Acting in...

The Conservative Revolution in the Southern Baptist Convention began over a cup of coffee nearly 40 years ago. A seminary student named Paige Patterson and a judge named Paul Pressler met at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans and discussed a long-term strategy to wrest control of the SBC from doctrinal moderates. Thirteen years later, in 1979, Memphis pastor Adrian Rogers _ groomed by Patterson and Pressler to lead the revolution _ was elected SBC president and the doctrinal cleansing began. The Conservative Reformation in the SBC began last December with a blog post that became a manifesto. "Crusading Conservatives...

Take a look at Ug the Caveman above on the computer. That is actually the image many KOmmies have of conservatives on the Internet. According to the LATEST hype, conservatives are uncomfortable using the science of the Internet in general and the Blogs in particular. As a result, it is the "progressives" that are taking the lead in the Blogosphere. Of course, REALITY tells a much different story when you actually LOOK at what are the leading Blogs: HOT AIR, MICHELLE MALKIN, little green footballs, Instapundit.COM, and many, many more such CONSERVATIVE Blogs. And technically speaking The Daily Kos...

When Al Jazeera broadcast Osama bin Laden’s latest audiotape in January, it provoked the same sense of déjà vu as Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, recently published by the leftist publishing house Verso. The book is a collection of every public utterance made by the Al Qaeda leader from 1994 to 2004. According to The Observer’s excitable reviewer, it shows that he is a “charismatic man of action, an eloquent preacher, a teacher of literature and a resilient, cunning, wonderfully briefed politician.” To me, however, there was something irritatingly familiar rather than surprisingly eloquent about...

In a decision that could set the tone for journalism in the digital age, a California appeals court ruled Friday that bloggers, like traditional reporters, have the right to keep their sources confidential... ...In their ruling, the judges said the online news sites should be treated as newspapers, television and radio broadcasts are. O'Grady and the other bloggers, they contended, were acting as traditional reporters and editors do: developing sources, collecting information and publishing it, albeit on the Web... ...But Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the companies can still protect their businesses but cannot use...

Teen Terror on the Web: Jihadi and Islamist Activities on MySpace.com By Laura Mansfield.com You’ve heard about MySpace.com, the social networking site that is commonly used by American teenagers. You’ve heard about the dangers of MySpace, as one news network after another reported on the prevalence of sexual predators on the system that prey on young teens who give out too much personal information. But MySpace.com isn’t just popular with sexual predators. As I reported in my presentation at the America’s Truth Forum Symposium two weeks ago, there is extensive jihadi activity and recruitment underway on MySpace.com. Teens and young...

NEPTUNE BEACH, FL -- A First Coast man is behind bars after police say he posed online as a 16-year old girl to lure a teen victim into forced sex. 27-year-old Travus Earl Belden is charged with attempted sexual battery on a minor, false imprisonment, and battery. His alleged victim -- a 14-year old Neptune Beach boy. Police who arrested Belden say he told them he was planning to harm the boy. "He (Belden) said that his intentions were sexual and violent in nature and he intended to do the young boy harm," said Neptune Beach Sergeant Ryan Hall. Police...

New legislation from Congress would block access to social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook in schools and libraries, including instant-messaging services. The bill known as the "The Deleting Online Predators Act" introduced by Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., aims at protecting minors from online child predators. According to the bill, it "prohibits access to commercial social networking Web sites or chat rooms through which minors" can access obscene or indecent material, be subject to unlawful sexual advances or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults, or access harmful information. The bill terms a social-network Web site as one...

Who are we? I’ve asked that question before in this space, in an effort to understand what it is that we’re defending. “We” comprise the amorphous and ever-shifting mass of people who are having an extended conversation in the blog world, one whose working title might be “The Counter-Jihad”. Or maybe “Can Western Civilization Be Saved?” One of the great heroic voices in this conversation is that of the Norwegian blogger Fjordman, who has recently posted here (just scroll down the side bar to find the links), and earlier on his own blog. Fjordman is a voice crying out...