Free Republic

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel earlier this month insisted that his brand of gun control should spread nationwide, but this past weekend’s Windy City body count – with six dead and more than 20 wounded, according to this morning’s Chicago Sun Times – does not instill public faith in his strategy. Earlier this month when Mark Glaze stepped down as executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “when a mass shooting happens…nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting (in Santa Barbara).” Late last month, Washington CeaseFire President Ralph...

At least 11 people were shot, four fatally, Saturday afternoon into early Sunday morning in Chicago. The most recent homicide occurred early Sunday morning on the Far South Side. At 7:43 a.m., police responded to a call of a "man down"’ in the 11100 block of South Lowe Avenue and found the victim with an apparent gunshot wound to the chest, according to Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Michael Sullivan.

Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh ‘kicked off the air’ over racist terms on radio Fri, 06/20/2014 - 3:37am Mitch Dudek According to posts on former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh’s Twitter account Thursday night, the conservative radio talk-show host was kicked off the air on WIND-AM (560) for using racial slurs while trying to have a discussion about racial slurs. In a series of tweets posted about 7 p.m., Walsh says: “Just got kicked off the air until further notice. Tried to have honest discussion about racist terms and management censored my language.” And: “I’m trying to have an honest, adult conversations about...

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times. "What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story...

A group of Chicago-area nuns is suing a strip club behind their convent, complaining of noise, glaring neon lights, fist fights and heaps of litter that include empty whiskey bottles and used condoms. The Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo said Illinois mandates a 1,000-foot (300-meter) buffer zone between adult entertainment venues and places of worship or schools. The suit, filed on Friday in Cook County, also names the village of Stone Park, where the strip club is located. The $3 million Club Allure opened last September across the back fence of the convent, which has three chapels, a home...

VIDEO: Store Clerk Stands Up To Shoplifting Mob June 16, 2014 (CBS) – Chicago police are investigating a bold and massive shoplifting scheme. They walk into a store like any other shopper, only they have no plans to pay. In fact, they grab what they want and suddenly take off. But as CBS 2’s Mike Parker reports, the thieves were not expecting a store employee to put up such a fight. A dozen or so people came to the Grand Crossing neighborhood K & G clothing store, but not in search of advertised bargains. They came to steal, as a...

In tandem with a new report on gun crime in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed to track gun sales throughout the region and clamp down on gun retailers. Emanuel’s proposal limits buyers to one handgun purchase per month, and demands that gun sales be videotaped. The proposal is a response to a federal judge’s ruling in January that found the city’s total ban on gun shops to be unconstitutional.

While announcing that they would not longer give killers the opportunity at glory that comes from having their names mentioned and their photographs aired on television, Sun News also address the extremely low rate of "mass shootings" in America compared to the excruciatingly high rate of murder in gun-controlled Chicago. According to the Sun News, mass shootings around the world--including the U.S.--are so rare that news agencies make a mistake by seizing on them. Focusing specifically on the U.S., Sun News reported: "And in the U.S., they account for less than one percent of all gun-related deaths. Far more people

This picture of a prom ticket for a Chicago High School proves that the school has a serious problem. Paul Robeson High School is in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and is one of the poorest and most dangerous schools in the city. See below via EAG News: That image came from veteran investigative reporter Chuck Goudie, who posted this image on his Facebook page. Some people might enjoy mocking the irony of the gross misuse of vocabulary. But unless the organizers of the prom festivities planned the wording this way as a joke, there’s nothing funny about the situation....

The Chicago Police Department, working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and FBI, has opened the Crime Gun Intelligence Center to crackdown on illegal guns from what they call “three-percenters.” A number of agencies including Chicago PD, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the ATF, and other regional partners, will operate the new joint task force from within the ATF’s Chicago Field Division. The target of this Crime Gun Intelligence Center: a group the ATF is referring to as “three-percenters.”

The South Side lakefront jewel where Barack and Michelle Obama held their wedding reception vs. a rare, open downtown field set against Chicago's majestic mountain range of skyscrapers. These are just a few of the preliminary offerings area universities plan to present to the president, the first lady and the few confidants helping them as they begin to weigh where to locate the Obama presidential library and museum. Meanwhile, the University of Hawaii, where the president grew up, has said it wants to build the library on oceanfront property in Kakaako, a commercial and retail district of Honolulu between Ala...

Three women were shot to death and at least seven other people were wounded in shootings across Chicago on Monday.

President Obama’s senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett held a series of meetings with illegal immigrant activists during Obama’s first term and concluded that “They are the best that we have.” Jarrett, a Chicago-era mentor to Obama and wife Michelle, is currently fighting to pass immigration reform legislation, in her words, “this summer.” “I had met, maybe, a year-and-a-half ago, with about Four Dream Act kids,” Jarrett said in a 2012 conversation with Walter Isaacson at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, video of which was posted by The Aspen Institute in 2014.

It’s hard to deny just how poorly Chicago’s public schools are performing when it hits you in the face. Such is the case with Paul Robeson High School’s 2014 prom theme: “This is Are Story.” That image came from veteran investigative reporter Chuck Goudie, who posted this image on his Facebook page. Some people might enjoy mocking the irony of the gross misuse of vocabulary. But unless the organizers of the prom festivities planned the wording this way as a joke, there’s nothing funny about the situation. Paul Robeson High School is located in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South...

Rebecca BorisonJune 9, 2014Pierre D. Martin The first person arrested using Chicago police's new facial recognition technology has been sentenced to 22 years in prison, according to The Chicago Sun Times. Pierre D. Martin, 35, was arrested for two armed robberies on Chicago's public transportation system. He was found with a new facial recognition technology the Chicago Police Department started using last year. One of the robberies took place on Feb. 9, 2013, when Martin robbed a 20-year old man on a Pink Line train. He pulled out a gun and took the victim's cellphone. Martin stole another victim's cellphone...

At least 30 people have been shot across Chicago this weekend, four of them fatally, officials said. The weekend’s first fatal shooting took place around 1:45 p.m. Friday in the 1900 block of West Howard Street in the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood when an 18-year-old man was found with gunshot wounds to his torso and back, police said.

Lyric Opera of Chicago stagehands found themselves in the middle of some real-life drama just outside their doors last month when they came to the aid of a tourist being pummeled in broad daylight. Police say Mark Ball, 50, allegedly began beating a 27-year-old Boston man — for no apparent reason — near 20 W. Wacker about 2:30 p.m. on May 28. For Robert Hartge, a laid-back day — the last of the season at the Lyric — was suddenly turned upside down in an instant. Standing inside the opera’s glass doors on Wacker Drive with other stagehands, Hartge noticed...

'Her words were powerful enough to move a small girl from the South Side of Chicago to the White House': Michelle Obama joins Bill Clinton and Oprah at memorial to celebrate the life of Maya Angelou Wake Forest Univerisity where writer taught for 30 years, hosts celebration of Angelou's lifeBeloved poet and author died at her home on May 28 aged 86 JESSICA JERREAT 7 June 2014 Clinton had chosen Angelou to read a poem at his first inauguration in 1993. The original composition, On the Pulse of Morning, went on to became a million-seller. He added: 'She may have...

Long before Gakirah Barnes was murdered in a hail of bullets on the South Side, her mother had heard the unsettling, persistent rumors about her. Her 17-year-old daughter — the same 5-foot-3, 128 pound girl once seen as shy at school — was known for something almost unheard of on the streets of Chicago. There are teenage girls who are accomplices in gang murders. There are girls who hide gang guns for their boyfriends. But Barnes was believed to be a “hitta” — a female assassin for a faction of the Gangster Disciples, law enforcement sources say.

To insurance companies, there’s no doubt that climate change is here: They are beginning to file lawsuits against small towns and cities who they say haven’t prepared for the floods and storms that will cost the companies billions in payments. Earlier this week, the U.S. arm of a major global insurance company backed away from an unprecedented lawsuit against Chicago and its suburbs for failing to prepare for heavy rains and associated flooding it claimed were fueled by global warming. While legal experts said the case was a longshot, its withdrawal didn't alter the message it contained for governments: prepare...