The Free Republic Forum... http://www.freerepublic.com
Freerepublic is still the best breaking news forum and the one place on the internet where you are most likely to see a really large number of interesting news items and articles and, believe it or not, there are still some number of intelligent people posting on the forum.
But the forum is not what it used to be and it can no longer be viewed as ground zero for conservative political activism the way it was in the late 1990s. The problem is ownership and management and the situation is similar to that of the NFL, in which the four key positions on any team are owner, head coach, general manager, and personnel director. Any sort of a big problem at one of those positions and nothing else is likely to help. In particular, any useful purpose still being served by FreeRepublic is being served despite Jim Robinson and not because of him. The general level of discussion has gone way down from what it was and you'd often get the impression you were reading some sort of a forum for pre-teens and teenagers; what I seem to be seeing at times appears to be the intellectual output of the myriad yes-boys who are left after all the purges and with whom Robinson has surrounded himself.
Free Republoic is basically a conservative discussion forum with tabu topics and several recognizable groups and subjects which you cannot say anything to or about without getting banned.
Again I have no real further use for FR at this point other than as a news site, again possibly the best of such. I'd appreciate hearing from anybody with any plausible ideas as to alternatives.
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