THE EARLY DAYS

Lucianne Goldberg's website sprang up several years ago after she quit the popular Conservative forum, FreeRepublic.com under acrimonious circumstances.

Lucy, who used to post as Trixie on Jim Robinson's site, is said to have taken a few thousand Freepers (as they are called) with her in the process. These included Ken Giles - a pompous rightwinger with a sadistic sense of humor who designed Lucy's site and was it's first webmaster.

In the beginning the site was quite a fun place to be, as the woman dubbed by some as Ma Barker, used it to shamelessly promote herself and have a little chuckle at her left-wing foes.

Many of her readers used it as a low-tech chat room, irritating the more fervent Lucy fans by posting light-hearted articles, silly 'gif' and 'jpg' picture files and generally clogging up much-needed bandwidth.

The genteel coffee house atmosphere was soon to change however.... e.com. Click on the links for a potted history of the website.