Free Republic

A badly burned body found on the floor of a River North parking garage early Tuesday has been identified as a 60-year-old real estate attorney, officials said. Louis S. Cohen, 60, was of the 200 block of Ivy Lane in Highland Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Wednesday was pending and did not determine a cause and manner for Cohen’s death, the office said. Just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, police and fire crews responded to a fire in the 11th floor of a parking garage in the 300 block of North LaSalle Drive and found...

With little warning or explanation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently canceled a major climate change conference that had been scheduled for next month in Atlanta. The Climate and Health Summit, which had been in the works for months, was intended as a chance for public health officials around the country to learn more about the mounting evidence of the risks to human health posed by the changing climate. But CDC officials abruptly canceled the conference before President Trump’s inauguration, sending a terse email on Jan. 9 to those who had been scheduled to speak at the event. The...

Two men in their late 20s were shot dead early Sunday morning outside a Checkers Drive-In restaurant near Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta. Ahmad Johnson, 27, of East Point, and Rickie Burke, 28, of Atlanta, died on the scene, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office. David Worrell, 22, was in critical condition after being shot, and later died at Grady Memorial Hospital. Drugs were discovered at the scene, according to police. A witness told Gehlbach (reporter) that he heard as many as 30 shots fired.

Atlanta’s deputy police chief says he’s concerned about an upward trend in murders across the city. So far this year, there have been six homicides in the city of Atlanta. That’s three times the amount the city had at this time last year. “We're concerned about the trend, anytime you have homicides, you’re concerned. But this time last year, we had two,” APD Deputy Chief Darryl Tolleson said. By the end of January 2016, there were just eight homicides in the city. Tolleson said four additional detective slots have just been added to the APD homicide unit. Last year, Atlanta...

On Friday, Georgia Congressman John Lewis, whose 5th District includes the City of Atlanta, said of Donald Trump that “I don’t see the president-elect as a legitimate president.” Trump characteristically fired back with a two-part tweet suggesting that Lewis “… spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.” As would be expected, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution rushed to Lewis’s defense. In its apparent haste to do so, a pair of journalists at the paper committed a colossal math blunder...

2008: Falsely accused Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Gov. Sarah Palin of racism. Lewis attacked McCain and Palin, then running against Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for president: “Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division,” he said, going on to suggest that the Republican ticket were creating the climate for racist terrorism. “[Democrat] George Wallace never threw a bomb … but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans … four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.” Years later, McCain...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson%20/2017/01/16/john-lewis-saint-andrew-young-tells-trump-surprise-phone-call/96509990/

The front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday blasts President-elect Donald Trump with the headline "Atlanta to Trump: Wrong." The accompanying front-page article reacts to Trump’s criticism of Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), after the incoming president said Saturday the longtime congressman does nothing for his district, which Trump said is in "horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)." “The district that Trump described as in ‘horrible shape’ includes Emory University and Morehouse College, as well as Spelman College and Georgia Tech. The Coca-Cola headquarters is just one of that district’s many, high-profile corporate residents,” the AJC article...

CNN)Bishop Eddie Long, the controversial leader of one of the nation's largest megachurches, has died, according to the suburban Atlanta church he presided over. He was 63. Long died after a battle with an aggressive form of cancer, according to a statement by the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Long was a national figure and one of the most innovative and polarizing pastors in the contemporary church. He was also a paradox. He was a preacher who led an infamous march against same-sex marriage and denounced homosexuality, but he also settled a lawsuit by four young men who said he...

John Lewis Makes A Fool of Himself On Capitol Hill... by refusing to attend the 2017 Inauguration. Lewis is apparently outraged over the loss of his party leader's bid for the presidency. Although Donald J. Trump won thirty of the fifty states and more individual counties than any other U.S. president since President Reagan, Lewis has been unable to accept his party's defeat. Accepting an uncomfortable loss is a life experience that escapes John R. Lewis, a man of 76 years of age. Lewis can be found declaring the President-Elect was not legitimately elected and promising to forego the Inauguration....

Leading MVP candidate Matt Ryan riddled Seattle's secondary for 338 yards and three touchdowns, leading the Atlanta Falcons to a convincing 36-20 victory over the Seahawks in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. Here's what we learned in Saturday's game: After both teams traded clinical opening-drive touchdowns that spilled over to the second quarter, a holding penalty on special teamer Kevin Pierre-Louis swung the game in Atlanta's favor. Devin Hester's 80-yard punt return would have set the Seahawks up at the seven-yard line with a chance to take a commanding 17-7 lead. Instead, Seattle lost 84 yards of field position,...

Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get! 7:22 PM - 14 Jan 2017

Representative John Lewis gave an interview with Chuck Todd of NBC News wherein he said that Donald Trump is not a legitimate President: "I don't see this President-elect as a legitimate president," Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, told NBC News' Chuck Todd in a clip released Friday. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton." (Quote per CNN) The media, which is overwhelmingly anti-Trump, jumped on this immediately.  All the news outlets were blasting out a story on this.  The cable news networks were glad to bring to the table yesterday,...

The NAACP President Cornell William Brooks is calling on Donald Trump to apologize to Alabama Rep. John Lewis, after attacking the civil rights icon in a series of tweets. “By disrespecting John Lewis, Donald Trump dishonored Lewis' sacrifice & demeaned Americans & the rights, he nearly died (for). Apologize,” Brooks tweeted.

President-elect Donald Trump unleashed a Twitter attack on Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, after the lawmaker said he wouldn't attend Trump's inauguration because he doesn't see him as a "legitimate president." Lewis in an interview with NBC on Friday cited Russia's meddling in the election for his view on the legitimacy of the presidential election results, and his comments stoked controversy with Republicans and debate inside the Democratic Party. "I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president," Lewis said.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed pushed back Saturday on President-elect Donald Trump’s assessment of civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ district. In a series of tweets, Reed said: “John Lewis is an American hero & a national treasure. Period. Full stop. “That PEOTUS Trump would attack Congressman Lewis on MLK Day weekend for “all talk…no action” when he bled to actually “Make America Great” is why far less than half the country supports him at the dawn of his presidency.” Trump said Lewis’s district was “in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)” in an early...

President-elect Donald Trump labeled a congressional district that sweeps through the heart of Atlanta as a “crime infested” area that is in “horrible shape” in an early-morning tweet Saturday aimed at one of his most outspoken Democratic critics. The Republican was unloading at Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who has represented the Atlanta district since his 1986 election, after the civil rights icon made national headlines when he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he will skip Trump’s inauguration next week. “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling...

Online commiseration over the results of the presidential election led a group of Georgians to plan an Atlanta march for social justice. Shown here are organizers, from left, Sawsan Selim, Aisha Yaqoob, Ahoo Sarab, Blynne Olivieri, Gerald Griggs, Gina Gareau-Clark, Cathy Roth, Janel Green and Harmel Deanne Codi. Leslie Sperry has never joined a political march. The Paulding County mother of two grown daughters plans to change that Saturday, Jan. 21, when she participates in the Atlanta March for Social Justice and Women. “It’s my first march in my 50-plus years, but it’s never too late to get involved,” Sperry...

New stats show alarming rise in drug abuse, HIV/AIDS infections ATLANTA — Fulton County’s rate of opioid overdose deaths was more than double the national average in 2014, newly released figures show. And the county — which contains most of the city of Atlanta as well as some of Georgia’s most affluent suburbs — had a higher rate of HIV diagnoses than all but one of 28 large cities studied, according to statistics released last week by the Big Cities Health Coalition project. Fulton’s data were used because the county, not the city, collects the area’s health information, which is...

ATLANTA (AP) -- An 86-year-old jewel thief who has kept jewelry sellers on their toes since the 1970s has struck again, police say - this time by slipping a $2,000 diamond necklace into her pocket. Doris Payne, who has been the subject of a documentary and casually said during an Associated Press interview earlier this year that "I was a thief," was arrested Tuesday at a Von Maur department store outside Atlanta. Payne was arrested after she put the necklace in her back pocket and tried to leave the store, Dunwoody police spokesman Mark Stevens said in an email. She...