AP: Free-republic gets ready to do battle again: "We've got people just spitting nails." [View All]

[sabra]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/sciencemedicine/story/7EA474F14283EEF486257506000805FE?OpenDocument

Pioneer behind grass-roots conservative Web site gets ready to do battle again

ASSOCIATED PRESS


This year, as Barack Obama prepares to sweep into office on another tide of Democratic votes, Robinson and denizens of that Web site, freerepublic.com, are preparing to do battle again.

"We'll double and redouble our efforts to fight for what is right," Robinson says. "We've got people just spitting nails."

Free Republic, founded by Robinson in September 1996, doesn't attract much attention from the national press and is not well-known among political experts. Many of its postings have a decidedly fringe feel.

...

And Free Republic played a key role in driving an anonymous chain e-mail that falsely claimed Obama had concealed ties to radical Islam, according to Danielle Allen, a professor of social science at the Princeton, N.J.-based Institute for Advanced Study who studied the rumor.

...


For instance, Allen said, Free Republic was the first to let users set the agenda -- an approach later copied by the left-leaning Democratic Underground.

:eyes: