Talk:Free Republic/refactor

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FreeRepublic is a moderated web forum for discussing the concerns of some Conservative Republican factions in US Politics.

FreeRepublic in the media
On a July 2007 edition of the O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly interviewed FreeRepublic spokesman Kristinn Taylor. Bill O'Reilly remarked that the postings on the website were "vile" and "hateful", besmirching the Christian values of the Republican party. O'Reilly said to Taylor that FreeRepublic 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.

Earlier 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..."

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 FreeRepublic 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 freerepublic.com, said Ryan O'Doherty's Democratic Party address was one of at least three used to operate the identity of MD4BUSH."

The band Dixie Chicks and lead singer Natalie Maines claim that FreeRepublic was instrumental in fueling a nationwide boycott of their music, which was organized by some former fans and radio stations after Maines made some anti-Bush comments in 2003. In their 2006 documentary Shut Up and Sing as well as in interviews, the Dixie Chicks have often mentioned FreeRepublic in reference to the boycott, which sharply reduced sales of their CDs and concert tickets.

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."

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 FreeRepublic 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. .

FreeRepublic 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 [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/replies?c=47 post] on FreeRepublic 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", though the claim was disputed by an expert hired by CBS Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant, , , said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents. Wrong or not, his posting spurred discussion spread across the Internet via blogs (attributing FreeRepublic) and the Drudge Report (attributing the Powerline blog, which credited "Buckhead" at FreeRepublic). 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, FreeRepublic "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."

FreeRepublic Origins
FreeRepublic gained popularity during the Clinton impeachment controversy in 1997 and 1998, 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 500 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.

Six and a half years later, the FreeRepublic "March for Justice II" drew far fewer participants.



Since then, activism has been left to 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.

In its early years, FreeRepublic generally encouraged 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 LLC
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. It has always been a for-profit company and donations have never been tax exempt.

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.