Free Republic

Chicago (CNN)Violence in this great American city matures so notoriously that film director Spike Lee now purportedly seeks a new nickname for the Windy City: Chiraq. The name merges Chi-town with Iraq -- as if Chicago sinks like the godforsaken Iraq, a hopeless war zone to the world.

The Columbia University student who carried her mattress around campus to protest how the school dealt her alleged rapist has created a video of herself having violent sex for her latest art piece. Emma Sulkowicz's new work, 'Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol' or 'This is not a rape', shows the 22-year-old engaging in consensual sexual contact with an unidentified man before it takes a dark twist. In the footage, she cries in pain and protest in a dorm room as she is slapped, choked and forced into rough sex, the New York Daily News reported. The video was posted on...

The distance from Chicago to Dubuque, or Clinton, or Davenport is around 200 miles. It’s almost 250 from Burlington. This is a drive of four to five hours, even with no traffic. Yet recent and proposed actions by the federal government make Eastern Iowa part of the “greater-Chicago area.” The expanding federal nanny state has decided that our river towns, struggling to provide good jobs and decent housing for low-income people who already live here, should focus on recruiting low-income people from outside the state, instead of recruiting military veterans, active retirees, or young graduates, who can remain home, start...

Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is famous for saying that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste since it allows you to do things you might not be able to get done except for the emotions of the moment spurring calls to action. Chicago’s bloody Memorial Day weekend, which saw a dozen people killed -- including a four-year-old-girl -- certainly proved no exception to Rahm’s Rule as he called for, wait for it, stricter gun control as he spoke at a luncheon honoring police officers for valor and service. “It’s not just about...

Teravainen and Antoine Vermette scored 1:58 apart late in the third period, and the Blackhawks rallied to stun the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 on Wednesday night.

The new nation under Obama is now in the throes of a staggering Crime Wave, the likes of which America has not experienced in nearly twenty years. A WALL STREET JOURNAL (WSJ) expose of what the Ferguson effect really means puts up crime stats that really are hard to believe. “Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year.” But what is the larger theme behind this skein of shootings, stabbings and raw violence? The Obama administration’s theme of hatred of white, heterosexual males is the real story here. Ever since his diversity crowd grabbed...

If the Barack Obama Presidential Center is built in Washington Park, the city envisions a walking community, where visitors would step off a CTA Green Line train and stroll along decoratively landscaped sidewalks, lined with pedestrian scale lighting and seating areas. In Jackson Park, visitors might spend an afternoon biking from the lakefront to a well-lit, paved trail through the Midway Plaisance to the Obama center. The library project comes as the city faces a projected $1 billion budget shortfall next year and agencies such as the CTA are dealing with reduced aid from the state. Efforts to squeeze funding...

While Americans yawned through another weekend, watching television or playing catch with their kids, the greatest human rights violation in our nation’s troubled history took place in the sky above Chicago. Tahera Ahmad, a Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University who has participated in MSA and ISNA events, and gotten her photo taken with Obama, was denied an unopened Diet Coke.

CHICAGO — Barbara Byrd-Bennett has resigned as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools amid a federal investigation into a $20.5 million no-bid contract. **SNIP** The investigation centers on a $20.5 million no-bid contract at CPS related to an elite nonprofit education group that has long been at the center of city school reform efforts. Federal corruption investigators have also sought records related to some of Byrd-Bennett's top deputies. Byrd-Bennett, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, acknowledged when she went on leave that her presence could divert attention from the pressing affairs of the district as it tackles labor...

Barbara Byrd-Bennett has resigned as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools amid a federal investigation into a $20.5 million no-bid contract. In a letter dated last week, Byrd-Bennett said she planned to step down Monday. She did not give any reasons for her decision. Byrd-Bennett has been on paid leave since mid-April, when school officials released wide-ranging subpoenas from the federal investigation. Her paid leave was scheduled to end next week and she had not been expected to return to her post. The investigation centers on a $20.5 million no-bid contract at CPS related to an elite nonprofit education...

<p>A Muslim chaplain flying from Chicago to Washington D.C. Friday says she was left “in tears of humiliation” after a flight attendant allegedly suggested she was a safety risk and another passenger screamed obscenities at her.</p> <p>Tahera Ahmad, an associate chaplain and director of interfaith engagement at Northwestern University in Illinois, wrote on her Facebook page that a United Airlines flight attendant refused to give her an unopened can of Diet Coke as she had requested.</p>

A reference to the gun violence that has left parts of Chicago feeling like a war zone to many residents, the word is believed to have been coined by local rappers years ago. But it is taking on another life as the working title of a new Spike Lee movie that is expected to be filmed here this summer. Local politicians have lined up against the title. Mr. Lee has been confronted by Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who told him in a meeting last month that he was “not happy” about the name.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is beginning to disappear, and a new era of chaos and anarchy is coming to our cities. I don’t know if you have noticed, but violence is increasing on the streets of America. Over Memorial Day weekend, 29 people were shot in Baltimore and 55 people were shot in Chicago. But of course the trend that I am talking about is much broader than that. According to the FBI, the number of police officers “feloniously killed” in the line of duty rose by an astounding...

A man was killed and at least 13 others, including a 2-year-old girl, were injured in shootings across Chicago since Thursday evening, police said. Police said the 2-year-old girl was wounded around 10:30 p.m. in the 6200 block of South Honore Street in the city's Englewood neighborhood when shots were fired, striking a group of people on a sidewalk.

Following a Chicago grand jury’s decision to indict former House speaker Dennis Hastert on charges that he violated federal banking laws by paying $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct,” rumors have abounded about what exactly that misconduct might be. The Washington Post reports now that Hastert “was trying to cover up decades-old allegations that he sexually molested a male victim to whom he recently paid hush money in violation of federal banking laws, according to a federal law enforcement official briefed on the case.” The misconduct, according to the unnamed source, dates from Hastert’s days...

Either Ted Cruz is hip or rap is dead. I am not sure which. It has to be one of the two. A group called We Are Watchmen, a Christian rap group from the Chicago suburb of Westchester, has made what can be loosely described as a “rap paean” to Ted Cruz. It is entitled “Set It On Fire.” It is about four minutes long, and if you listen to it enough times, every ounce of hipness drains from your body and you become Donny Osmond. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The title is misleading. The gist of the song is that you should vote...

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Chicago. The Illinois Republican, 73, is charged with trying to evade cash withdrawal requirements, and with lying to the FBI about it.

It’s a racially charged photo the Chicago Police Department didn’t want the public to see: two white cops posing with rifles as they stand over a black man lying on his belly with deer antlers on his head. But a Cook County judge has refused to keep secret the shocking image of former Officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan kneeling with what the police department says is an unidentified African-American drug suspect. Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013...

.....Chicago Police Officers Jerome Finnigan, left, and Timothy McDermott with an unknown man in a photo believed to be taken between 1999 and 2003. | Court file photo Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday had two choice words for the now-fired Chicago Police officer who joined another former officer in posing with rifles as they stood over a black man lying on his belly with deer antlers on his head. “Good riddance.” “Let me be clear: That photo does not represent the values of the city of Chicago that we all share in common. It doesn’t represent the values of the...

Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul brought his presidential campaign to Chicago on Wednesday, appealing to African-Americans on the South Side, entrepreneurs downtown and Republicans in the suburbs.