Free Republic

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Free Republic is a moderated Internet forum, activist and chat site for conservatives, primarily within the United States. It presents articles and comments posted anonymously by registered members using screen names. Due to copyright restrictions (see below), posted articles are often excerpts from originals.

For each article, the forum's main page typically shows its headline, plus the first hundred words of the article as posted to Free Republic. Users can see the full article at its original source by clicking a hyperlink beneath the headline.

Registered members post a continuous flow of new articles to the forum.

Free Republic forums are open to registered users (account registration began on November 28, 1997) for discussion about news stories excerpted and linked from their sources, political events, conservative principles and the elimination of government corruption and abuse. Other frequent subjects are Prayer Requests, "Caption This Photo", and a number of subjects in which interest is so prolonged so as to be featured as Daily Threads and given separate homepage links, amongst which can be found:

• "FReeper Canteen" (a daily thread dedicated to those who serve in the armed forces),
• "Pookie's Toons" (a.k.a. "Today's Toons"), a daily collection of political cartoons updated daily
• horse chat,
• hobbit chat,
• political limericks
• Prayer Request for a friend's grandchild,
• Terri Schiavo,
• "Pray for President Bush",
• "A Day in the Life of Pres. Bush (photos)",

There are daily and weekly live threads discussing numerous local, syndicated and Internet-only conservative talk radio broadcasts.

There are local chapters "unconnected with Free Republic", organized through ping lists, e-mail, and Free Republic mail. Some are only "ping list" groups, members who include their names in a list to be "pinged" on news articles of a certain nature. Some cover presidential events (daily picture, prayer, and speech threads), some focus on conservative principles such as the Second Amendment, the pro-life movement, or opposing gay marriage.

The more active chapters organize live protests, which they call "Freeps." Since the 2000 election, these are often counter-protests, responses to protests by opposition groups , or small rallies.

Free Republic has an official policy which allows authorized moderators to remove postings identified as blatantly violent, racist or bigoted.. Postings deemed to support "Liberal" points of view may also be "moderated" per official policy, expressed in 2004 by the owner as: "we feel no compelling need to allow [liberals] a platform to promote their repugnant and obnoxious propaganda from our forum. Free Republic is not a liberal debating society." The owner reserves the right to revoke posting privileges and exclude any individual without recourse.

Chronology

1996-2000 - Anti-Clinton

Founded in September 1996 as a sole proprietorship by Founder, Chairman and President James C. "Jim" Robinson of Fresno, California, Free Republic opened to the general public in February, 1997. Robinson filed for LLC status on September 11, 1998. Free Republic gained popularity during the Clinton impeachment controversy in 1997 and 1998, a time when it was linked on the Drudge Report as "Whitewater Archives," when protests and write-in campaigns were organized through the website. Many were also introduced to the site through an impeachment rally in Washington, attended by over five hundred participants, called the "March for Justice," broadcast live on Halloween 1998 (a Saturday) by the C-SPAN channel. Featured speakers were Alan Keyes, Bob Barr, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson of B.O.N.D. and Larry Klayman. Ann Coulter, Lucianne Goldberg and Matt Drudge also attended. Other Free Republic events over the years have also been televised by C-SPAN.

Drudge dropped the link to Free Republic by February, 1999, "because they were doing racist stuff over the [Clinton love child]." Drudge currently does not link.

[This lawsuit is] a life and death struggle with elements of the socialist propaganda machine.. — Jim Robinson, founder of Free Republic, speaking about lawsuit by The Los Angeles Times.

In its early years, Free Republic generally allowed its members to post copyrighted news stories in entirety to its forum, regardless of whether permission had been granted by content owners, until the site was sued in 1998 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times for copyright infringement. The newspapers obtained a permanent injunction, although stipulated damages of $1 million were reduced to $10,000 during settlement negotiations which allowed the defendants to drop their appeal. The case, often cited when arguing cyberlaw, is called L.A. Times v. Free Republic. Free Republic members called the lawsuit a conspiracy by the liberal media to stifle the organization, and Robinson referred to the suit as "a life and death struggle with elements of the socialist propaganda machine."

Well, my fingers are not cold and dead and my keyboard has not been ripped away. While this is not entirely a win for FR, neither is it a crushing defeat. . — Robinson, after dropping the appeal of the copyright infringement judgment against Free Republic

From 1996-2000, the bulletin board was virtually unmoderated. This policy was central to the website's Fair Use defense in the Copyright Infringement litigation, wherein it stated "(t)he website operated by the defendants, www.freerepublic.com, permits anyone who wishes to post news articles or other items and to post commentary about the article as well ... no censorship is made and all views are permitted."

Salon.com's Jeff Stein observed in 1999 that: "[A] swelling number of haters have turned up the volume of death threats, gay-bashing, name-calling and conspiracy theories tying the father of Republican front-runner George W. Bush to drug-dealing by the CIA."

Robinson "famously blasted George W. Bush's presidential candidacy back in 2000, before a dramatic late-campaign about-face that saw him emerge as one of the GOP ticket's biggest supporters." He addressed members who were Bush partisans in this ardent post

"So, it doesn't matter if he snorted coke as a youth? It was a long time ago, a youthful indiscretion? . . . Well, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You people are sick! Conservatives my ass. You people are nothing but a bunch of non-thinking hypocrits (sic)! You're a shame and a disgrace to the Republic! And, I, for one, am tired of taking orders from cokeheads and felons! Elect another one and I'll tell you what. I'll be ready for war! It'll be time to take up arms and run the filthy lying bastards out!"

These dramatic shifts signalled internal battles comparable to the "April Purge" of 2007 "as its founder and chief administrator first cleansed commenting ranks of Bush supporters, then, later, rallied to his support."

White House Press Secretary and former Fox News commentator Tony Snow was a registered member from April 23, 1998 until the day after the White House announced his consideratiion for the post of Press Secretary on April 23, 2006. When he accepted his position with the Bush administration his account was "purple screened" (suspended), and the account was un-suspended on September 14 when he resigned his post with the administration. Snow was not afraid to 'mix it up' with the Freepers who sometimes disagreed with his political philosophy and who called him a "pansy" and a "dullard".

Free Republic had been criticized during the pre-moderation period for the actions of a few of its members. In 1999, after FReepers heard that Julie Hiatt Steele, the woman charged with obstruction of justice by Kenneth Starr during President Clinton's impeachment trial, was taking credit-card donations to help pay her legal bills, they flooded her Web site with fake donations. Hundreds of "donations" listing fake credit-card numbers (a form of wire fraud) ended up costing Steele around $4,000, since she had to pay her e-commerce service company 25 to 35 cents to process each one. Some threatened to assassinate former President Bill Clinton, like this from February 2001: "If he keeps on he's going to make me come up there. There is only one solution to the Klintons, two 45 rounds and a nice little spot in Marcy Park." . When the bar manager of a restaurant notified authorities that an underage Jenna Bush had attempted to purchase liquor in June 2001, her personal information including her home address, date of birth, driver's license number and physical description was posted, along with calls for punitive action.

The Clinton threat and some of the bar manager's personal information were removed by Robinson when brought to his attention, and the authors' posting privileges were revoked. He said that the site had had to "delete relatively few posts" over time for violations of its "no-violence" policy despite Free Republic's popularity and ease of registration. The addition of round-the-clock moderation, coupled with changes in registration procedure, has largely secured the site from further internal threats.

2001-2003 - Bush's first term

In January 2001, the forum organized a "Free Republic Inaugural Gala and Count the Silverware Ball, with orchestral entertainment provided by the sitting governor of Arkansas (Gov. Mike Huckabee) and his band." Among the attendees were James Golden (a.k.a., Bo Snerdly from Rush Limbaugh radio broadcasts, an early investor in Free Republic), and the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson of B.O.N.D.

The first moderator other than the sysop himself was the "Sidebar Moderator", which was registered on May 9, 2001. An "admin moderator" was registered on September 1, 2001, with the power to remove enjoined articles and objectionable posts and ban registered users. There are an undisclosed number of other anonymous, lesser empowered moderators. Content-monitoring is aided by the rank-and-file members through the use of an "Abuse Reporting" button available only to registrants, to alert moderators of suspect expression.

At "the second annual Southeastern Rally, thrown by the South Carolina chapter of the Free Republic Network, the nascent organizing group that has spun off from no-holds-barred conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com" in 2001, about fifty Freepers paid $220 a night to attend a conference at which conservative politicians such as South Carolina Secretary of State Jim Miles, and others spoke regarding issues such as the rights of man and the problems with the news media. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was announced to be attending to receive the same award the group had given Linda Tripp the previous year , but she did not attend. The evening concluded with a presentation, from the event's organizer and Chapter President, Julie Nicholson, of a Confederate flag flown from the South Carolina statehouse, to Bob Johnson, from Los Angeles, for spearheading the Free Republic Network.

Nicholson is also known as Julie Redick, and used the screen name "Commonsense". Robinson wrote "there was some money collected for events that was never paid over to the vendors and the chapter leader is accused of taking off with the money." Nicholson's long criminal record began in 1980.

Free Republic Network is currently moribund, its corporate status suspended. "Sadly, the FRN did not survive the infighting on FR," Johnson wrote.

'Leftist ... agents provocateurs'

The Freepers have maintained that members of rival left-wing talkboards such as Democratic Underground, and others who disagree with FR conservative politics, have frequently established accounts at Free Republic for inappropriate purposes. Often such an account is immediately banned by Free Republic moderators, since the first posts from the account are argumentative and critical of the prevailing Freeper beliefs.

Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs.. — Sean Scallon in Chronicles magazine, writing about pre-2000 left-wing vandalism at Free Republic.

However, other vandal accounts remain dormant, or are used to establish a usage pattern of bland and inoffensive posts, for months or even years. These are described as "sleeper" accounts. Eventually, the vandal uses the account to post something offensive, such as a blatantly racist rant, or violent threat, to deliberately damage the forum's reputation.

Sean Scallon of Chronicles magazine referred to this phenomenon: "[Before moderation was introduced] Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs." Freepers have claims that "WyldCard," the account used to post personal details about a restaurant manager who called 911 when an underage Jenna Bush ordered an alcoholic beverage, was such a "sleeper" account created by a left-wing vandal.

A more recent, well-documented and well-publicized example of a liberal "agent provocateur" in action at Free Republic was the MD4Bush Incident (see below). The use of such sleeper accounts and "agent provocateur" activity is prohibited by Free Republic policy, but incidents such as these two are difficult to document.

2004 elections and Killian documents

Freepers counter-protest at an anti-war demonstration at Arlington National Cemetery on October 2, 2004.

During the 2004 U.S. Elections, Jerome Corsi, a Swift Boat Vet and co-author of the book Unfit for Command that attacked the Vietnam war record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, apologized in the national media for comments that he made on Free Republic under the user name "jrlc" "describing Muslims and Catholics as pedophiles and Pope John Paul II as senile." The posts were never moderated and were discovered and publicized by Media Matters for America..

Free Republic posters, notably "TankerKC" (later identified as active Air Force officer Paul Boley) and "Buckhead" (later identified as Atlanta GOP lawyer Harry W. MacDougald) contributed, along with members of the blogs Powerline and Little Green Footballs, to breaking what Freepers called "Memogate", the controversy surrounding CBS News' use of allegedly forged documents during the 2004 US presidential campaign.

MacDougald may be the first Internet user to post assertions that the memos were forged. In a post on Free Republic the night of the broadcast, he mentioned the memos' proportional spacing and made the claim that such printing was "not widespread until the mid to late 90's". His posting spurred discussion spread across the Internet via blogs (attributing Free Republic) and the Drudge Report (attributing the Powerline blog, which credited "Buckhead" at Free Republic). The Associated Press later picked it up. This resulted in the early retirement of Dan Rather, and the resignations of Mary Mapes and three other news division executives at CBS.

According to Ivor Tossell of the Globe and Mail, Free Republic "was central to the network of websites that uncovered the forged memos about Bush's Vietnam service that appeared on CBS News and ultimately cost Dan Rather his job."

Further information: Killian documents authenticity issues

MD4Bush Incident

In October 2004, an unknown person or persons created an account named "MD4Bush" to investigate the source of false rumors that Democratic Mayor of Baltimore Martin O'Malley had committed adultery suspected to be coming from the Ehrlich camp. O'Malley was a likely (and eventual) opponent of Ehrlich in the 2006 gubernatorial race. Using this alias, MD4Bush allegedly lured Joseph Steffen, aide to Ehrlich, who had a Free Republic membership as "NCPAC," into contact, brought up the rumors, and baited Steffen into giving responses on the FR "private message" system, appearing to take credit for spreading the rumors.

Ehrlich fired Steffen when the contents of these messages were published in the Washington Post on February 9, 2005. Kristinn Taylor, a spokesman for free republic.com, said Ryan O'Doherty's Democratic Party address was one of at least three used to operate the identity of MD4BUSH. Some Republicans and Freepers have charged that Post reporter Matthew Mosk's access of the MD4Bush account constitutes complicity to the alleged entrapment of Steffen, and a violation of the privacy of Free Republic users. No legal remedy was sought by any of the parties.

Further information: MD4Bush Incident

2005-now - Bush's second term

It's scary how much power they do have. They can take down someone singlehandedly and I don't think Americans are aware of that.. — Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, speaking about Free Republic.

In January 2005, Free Republic organized an unofficial Inaugural Ball at the Washington Plaza Hotel to celebrate the reelection of President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney and to honor the men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces. The event was promoted to feature then Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee and his rock and roll band called Capitol Offense.

On August 19, 2005, a member of the D.C. Chapter of Free Republic participated in a counter-protest at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington in opposition to the antiwar group Code Pink. Walter Reed is home to many soldiers recuperating from serious injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two dozen Freepers attend the March for Justice II rally at the Upper Senate Park on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Thursday, April 7, 2005.

The band Dixie Chicks and lead singer Natalie Maines claim that Free Republic was instrumental in fueling a boycott of their music which was organized by some former fans and radio stations after Maines made anti-Bush comments in 2003. In their 2006 documentary Shut Up and Sing as well as in interviews, the Dixie Chicks have often mentioned Free Republic in reference to the boycott. Maines was quoted as saying: "It's scary how much power they do have. They can take down someone singlehandedly and I don't think Americans are aware of that."

Kristinn Taylor of Free Republic's dominant D.C. Chapter attended the screening of the film hosted by the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress. He was invited to join in a discussion after the screening and complimented the director on the film.

Further information: Dixie chicks § Political controversy

Allegations of unfair treatment of Giuliani supporters

In 2007, moderators removed the posting privileges of many members who supported the presidential campaign of current Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani. The New York Observer reported:

     Starting in April 2007 ... members sympathetic to the former mayor's candidacy claim to have suffered banishment from the site. They were victimized, they say, by a wave of purges designed to weed out any remaining support for the Giuliani campaign...

Criticisms

On a July 2007 edition of the O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly interviewed Free Republic spokesman Kristinn Taylor. Bill O'Reilly remarked that the postings on the website were "vile" and "hateful", besmerching the Christian values of the Republican party. O'Reilly said to Taylor that Free Republic had "some pretty sick people posting" and gave examples of racist and homophobic postings, as well as a post inciting the murder of Hillary Clinton. Taylor argued that it is only down to poor moderation that these posts exist.

Freerepublic has also been criticized for its supposed use of illegal immigration to criticize all immigrants. Some comments on freerepublic in general have been criticized as racist and stereotypical of Hispanic legal immigrants. . Freerepublic posters are often criticized for giving a racial and religious angle to every immigration debate. .

Discovering Hillary staffer at debate

FReepers were among the first in the country to determine that Keith Kerr, Colonel, AUS-ret, and BG, CSMR-ret., who had been transported live to give a question at the Republican CNN-YouTube presidential debates on November 28, 2007, was listed as a member of the Steering Committee of the "LGBT Americans For Hillary" The discovery led to further investigation from the blogosphere that revealed several other questions posed by supporters of other Democratic candidates portrayed as supposedly objective or undecided voters.

Influencing online polls

Media web sites, including newspapers, television networks, and America Online, run occasional "polls" that do not use the sampling methods of formal opinion polls but instead invite everyone to respond. Some Free Republic forum messages, usually captioned "FReep this poll!", urge Free Republic members to vote en masse in these polls. Members are also urged to "'Freep' C-Span's 'Washington Journal' with telephone calls pointing out media bias".

"Whenever a poll is posted on Free Republic.com, everybody goes and votes the right way, and there's nothing wrong with that," says Marinelle Thompson, FReeper and founder of gun rights group Second Amendment Sisters. "We just do it for a laugh. It doesn't really mean anything." The polls can also be manipulated said Vlae Kershner, SF Gate News Director (and poll writer): "People are finding a way of getting around our system that only allows one vote, and they're voting hundreds of times. It's not thousands of people voting one way; it's one or two people voting hundreds of times."

Sometimes, if the current results of an online poll are unfavorable to them, Freepers will "reverse freep" it, voting against their own views to pad the opposing vote to the point where it loses credibility.

External links

• Official website
• Official Yahoo Backup website
• 1996 Archived homepage
• 1997 archived homepage
• 1998 Archived homepage
• Whitewater Archives
• Raimondo, Justin "Corporate Liberals Target Conservative Web Site" Nov. 12, 1999
• Stein, Jeff. "Free-for-all at Free Republic: Lucianne Goldberg, Matt Drudge and other friends abandon the Clinton-bashing Web site over its attacks on George W. Bush" Salon, 13 July 1999.
• Lauerman, Kerry. "They're here, they're mad, get used to it." Salon, 24 June 2001.
• York, Anthony. "Free Republic defends Salon." Salon, 18 July 2001.
• Not So Free Republic Gheen, William February 11, 2005
• Another Yahoo FR Group
• Texas Group
• Maryland Group
• Song Parodies with a FR Focus
• The Free Republic Lexicon, a glossary of terms used on the site