Vanity - FR is the only site on the web that is painfully slow to me

For about a week now, in multiple browsers and from iPad and iMac, Free Republic has been deadly slow. Frequently it times out waiting to load. This is on FIOS at top speed, both wireless and wired. No other site is even slightly slow for me. I don't see any other threads mentioning this, and I've posted to the yahoo group with no responses, so I am assuming it's me. What could I be doing wrong? Or has this been your experience too? What's up?

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M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.

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Free pot draws a crowd as Sacramento County dispensary closes

Free pot draws a crowd as Sacramento County dispensary closesBy Peter Hecht - The Sacramento Bee Last Modified: Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 - 3:58 pm Hundreds of people lined up for free grams of medical marijuana and discount pricing today as one of Sacramento County's last surviving dispensaries closed with a flourish and a day tinged with politics. People snaked around the building at the Magnolia Wellness Center, waiting more than two hours for their marijuana as the Orangevale dispensary doled out its inventory and promoted a political drive to overturn the county's ban on cannabis stores. Sacramento County, which...

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China villagers threaten to march on government offices

Protesting villagers in southern China said they will march on government offices this week unless the body of a local leader is released and four villagers in police custody are freed. The 13,000 residents of Wukan, in the wealthy province of Guangdong, are in open revolt against officialdom and have driven out local Communist Party leaders who they say have been stealing their land for years. Many local businesses have been closed for the past week while schools have been shuttered as riot police blockade the village, which has for months been the scene of occasionally violent protests over land...

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Beijing orders microbloggers to register real names

Beijing city authorities on Friday issued new rules requiring microbloggers to register their real names before posting online, as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the Internet. The city government now requires users of weibos -- the Chinese version of Twitter -- to give their real names to website administrators, its official news portal said. The new rules will apply to weibo operators based in Beijing, which include Sina -- owner of China's most popular microblogging service which has more than 200 million users. "Websites with weibo operations must establish and improve a system of content censorship," according to...

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Twitter stalking is protected free speech, judge rules

Twitter stalking is protected free speech, judge rulesBy Andrew Couts | Digital Trends – 2 hrs 28 mins ago A San Francisco judge has declared cyberstalking on Twitter and blogs constitutionally-protected free speech, reports The New York Times. The ruling is a victory for the First Amendment. But like all things worth fighting for, it comes at a price. **SNIP** Titus ruled that, because no one was forced to read Cassidy’s posts and tweets — as opposed to a “telephone call, letter or email specifically addressed to and directed at another person” — they are considered free speech, not harassment,...

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Obama Says Free Markets Never Work

For most of his time as a national political figure, Barack Obama has been careful to cloak his core socialist leanings behind a veil of pro-capitalist rhetoric. This makes strategic sense, as Americans still largely identify as pro-capitalist. However, based on his recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the President appears to have reassessed the political landscape in advance of the 2012 elections. Based on the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the recent defeat of Republicans in special elections, he has perhaps sensed a surge of left-leaning sentiment; and, as a result, he finally dropped the pretense. According...

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Occupy Wall Street's Latest Plan: Refuse to Repay Student Loan Debt

Occupy Wall Street’s latest grievance centers on student loan programs and higher education reform, and the group’s most recent campaign involves a movement-wide boycott on student loan debt repayment. Early Monday afternoon, a crowd of faculty and student organizers assembled at the southeast corner of New York City's Zuccotti Park to announce Occupy Student Debt, a national initiative directed at recruiting student loan borrowers and requesting that they willfully default on their loan payments. The campaign consists of three pledges: 1. A refusal to make loan payments. This pledge will take effect after a million debtors have signed on to...

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Occupiers Protest $1.4 Billion Free Art Museum to Bash Wal-Mart

In their zeal to bash Wal-Mart, Occupy Wall Street protesters are even complaining about the company giving $1.4 billion to found a free art museum in Arkansas. Alice Walton, Wal-Mart heiress, is being criticized by Occupy Wall Street for giving $1.4 billion to found an Arkansas art museum. The incoherent and absurd messaging of the Occupy Wall Street movement continues. Recently, the OWS crowd joined forces with Wal-Mart workers to protest Crystal Bridges, an American art museum that opened on Nov. 11 in Bentonville, Ark. Art snobs are outraged by the notion of a major art collection in Arkansas, but...

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ACLU: Occupy MN has right to unrestricted use of public property — and free electricity, too

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota sued Hennepin County on Monday on behalf of OccupyMPLS, the protest group camping out on the Government Center Plaza in downtown Minneapolis in defiance of county rules. The ACLU suit contends that those rules, which forbid tents and electricity, and “certain unwritten procedures enforced by the county” violate the demonstrators’ free speech rights. … The suit asks that new rules restricting the use of chalk, electricity and tents be declared unconstitutional. The plaintiffs are also seeking an injunction against the rules, and they want the county to provide electricity for the protesters. It...

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