Free Republic

The stature of the blogs is a striking feature of the American elections. There are more of them, and some of the best journalists now working exclusively online (which means there are several news cycles in a day, and newspapers are outdated by 9am). Sites like Politico have done a talent swoop; the Drudge Report is checked several times a day by most American journalists, used as a radar. Now there are attack dog sites: scores of them, eager to tear into the other side. The Daily Kos – described as “extreme left” by Fox – is one. But others,...

Are liberals more profane than conservatives? Online, the answer seems to be yes. Profanity, those taboo words banned from the broadcast airwaves, is a feature of many people's daily lives. It's much less so in the establishment media world. TV and radio broadcasts are legally prohibited from using it, most newspapers (including this one) have traditionally refrained from its usage. That's not the case with the Web, where bloggers and readers face no such restrictions. That likely comes as no surprise; what may be surprising, however, is to what degree profanity seems to be a feature more common on one...

Sen. John McCain's campaign is urging supporters to spam blogs and forums with official talking points, according to the Washington Post. If you do a good job, you can even win prizes. "That, in essence, is the McCain campaign's pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of 'AstroTurf' campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper." "People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification...

An official blog website set up by US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign team has become a clearinghouse for some of the most virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric found anywhere on the Internet. WorldNetDaily reported that the website, titled MyObama, allows registered users to set up conversation groups and community blogs where they can post their own content. That has opened the flood gates for the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories and incitement that characterize so many of Obama's supporters. Many of the posts are of typical fare, including accusations that Israel was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks, that Israel and...

***NEW CNN POLICY REGARDING PERSONAL WRITINGS ONLINE*** We’ve gotten a number of questions from CNN staff wanting clarification of CNN policy on communicating publicly about our work, or on news or public affairs -- on the internet. In Blogs. In Chatrooms. On video sharing sites. On social networking sites. Below are some of the typical questions -- and our answers. We hope this is helpful to everyone, After reading -- please don’t hesitate to call or email anyone at Standards and Practices if you have further questions. (See contact info below). MOST IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER: UNLESS GIVEN PERMISSION BY CNN...

Web loggers who are campaigning against Senator Obama's presidential run are accusing Google and Obama supporters of silencing them after their Web logs were marked as spam and their accounts temporarily frozen. On Thursday, hours after publishing a post about an online petition demanding that Mr. Obama publicly produce his birth certificate, an associate professor of business administration at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, found that he could no longer access his Web log.

Last week, we published Babba Zee's Anti-Obama Blogs Shut Down by Google, Obamabots. Thurday, Blogger locked our original (and still quite robust) site, DBKP at Blogger for being a spam blog. One would think Blogger would have a system in place before shutting down blogs with any kind of Google Page Rank. After all, your average spam site doesn't acquire much of a page rank. But, apparently, one would be wrong. Our original site is PR-5. Were Obama supporters behind this latest round of blog shutdowns, as they were last month? In Obama's Netroots Supporters Continue "Blog Burning", Confederate Yankee...

Hi everybody, I’m excited to be posting on BlogHer. Not only because blogging is something I’ve actually been able to beat my daughters to; but because it gives me the opportunity to tell you a little bit about them, my husband, myself, and our experiences traveling all over this great country. Over the course of this campaign, I’ve been hosting roundtable discussions with working women all across America. I’m there to talk about my husband, of course – but more importantly, I’m there to listen. We talk about what it’s like to play multiple roles at once and what it’s...

Usually when I write “Grandmom’s guide to computer” series, I get a geek who corrects my ignorance. That’s fine: I’m a doctor, not a geek, and the series is trying to explain basic computer stuff that I had to learn painfully on my own to others who might, like me, be from the stone ages of snailmail and dead wood news. However, when an article about computer security and the danger of opening spam (using a WaPo article on Obama spam as an example) resulted in a personal attack by an Obama supporter, well, it got me wondering. Usually I...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Comments from bloggers that say, "Hartford is a piece-of-scum city populated by animals," and, "It is the African/ Latino people that have ruined our country,” are the kind that Mayor Eddie Perez said he no longer wants to see on www.hartford.com. Perez and community leaders held a rally Friday afternoon in front of the Broad Street headquarters of the state's largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant. Perez said he's asked the Courant to better monitor comment from readers

In reading a small slice of the coverage of the AP - Drudge Retort contretemps it struck me that a lot of the more breathless coverage in the blogosphere stems from the rather larger misperception that one day last week, out of the blue, Rogers Cadenhead got slapped with a lawsuit by AP. As one of the few people who has seen all the legal documents in the case and has actually read the Digital Millennium Copyright Act I can see it would be wise for some folks to cool down and acquaint themselves with the rather prosaic facts in...

As anybody with high-speed Internet knows, MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. Though their websites offer distinct communities and commentaries, and though they have very different personalities, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong (a former astrologer) and Kos's Markos Moulitsas (a former Army man) have always gotten along--the two co-authored a 2006 book, Crashing the Gate, about the rise of their movement. Their bond has been rooted...

Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is trying to tap a new audience of potential voters by taking his campaign message straight to liberal and nonpolitical issues-based blogs, which reach millions of readers but don't often delve into conservative politics. The strategy was in full swing yesterday when Mr. McCain invited non-conservative bloggers to join his regular blogger conference call, just hours after he delivered a major speech previewing his war strategy and other priorities for a first presidential term. It already has started a war among liberal bloggers over how to react to Mr. McCain's overture. In answering the first...

The move on the Left from Hillary to Obama has all the characteristics of a nasty divorce. A few days ago I wrote about one of my associates who transferred his affection from the Clintons to Obama. He spoke about Hillary like she was a wife who had slept with his best friend. The expressions of loathing are especially graphic in the blogosphere. Thanks to Powerline we get a glimpse of what the Left is saying when they are not using four letter words to describe Hillary. Posts like this one from John Aravosis, with the title "Go away you...

The recent offensive operations taken by the Iraqi government against the Mahdi Army (Jaish al-Mahdi - JAM) of Muqtada al-Sadr have received much analysis and commentary since the onset. Each of the ensuing analysis and commentary offerings have agreed that the Maliki government’s military actions and the Mahdi Army response are revelatory in nature. But that is where the agreement seems to end, as there appears a divergence regarding precisely what has been revealed: Who has operated and enjoys the position of strength, Maliki and the Iraqi government and military forces, or the Mahdi Army forces of Muqtada al-Sadr, which...

SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment. Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create...

It's a bummer when an online slime machine is outed.Media Matters was an extremely effective leftwing propaganda outfit until it was found out that they were linked directly to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as billionaire leftist George Soros.Copious Dissent explains what happens to a liberal slime machine like Media Matters after being exposed. It looks like Think Progress may be following in their footsteps.  

The grass-roots, non-traditional media bloggers from across the country vying for credentials to cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention will have the chance to report while seated with their respective delegations, the Democratic National Convention Committee announced today. The Democrats are expanding the number of independent bloggers to receive the coveted passes into the convention hall in 2008. Less than 40 of these bloggers were credentialed in 2004. This year, The DNCC will award one credential to a local blogger from each of the state delegations and those delegations representing the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the American Samoa, the...

SHANGHAI, March 15 (Reuters) - China's carefully controlled media may have remained largely silent on the unrest in Tibet, but a look at Chinese blogs reveals a vitriolic outpouring of anger and nationalism directed against Tibetans and the West. On Saturday, a rash of angry blog posts appeared after China confirmed deaths in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and U.S. actor Richard Gere called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics should the authorities mishandle the protests. Many blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, for inciting the riots. The view was echoed by...

What kinds of news stories stir up liberals? What kind thrill the conservatives? Those questions likely won't be definitively answered soon, at least not by humans. But a team of Microsoft researchers, specialists in natural language processing and machine learning, has been trying to resolve them using the Web. The research group, based at the company's Redmond, Wash. headquarters, is developing a program that classifies news stories according to whether liberal or conservative bloggers are linking to them. Then, to see which stories really excite the partisans, the program further aims to measure the "emotional intensity" of the blog posts...