Free Republic

Three Chicago Public Schools students have been charged with robbing and raping a 16-year-old girl at gunpoint after she got off a CTA bus on the South Side. The students — who attend Chicago Vocational Career Academy — were ordered held without bail Saturday. ... Wearing navy blue, jail-issued sweat clothes, they appeared Saturday before Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas, who denied them bail, saying, “Not only is this victim — but this community at large — is in grave danger.” All three defendants admitted the allegations against them

A federal court is ordering the city of Chicago to pay the National Rifle Association nearly $1 million in legal fees.

Unions took $4 million from Michigan daycare workers; class action lawsuit now possible. Michigan daycare operators who had millions of dollars taken from them in a unionization scheme that has since been outlawed, may get some of their money back. On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Harris v. Quinn that people who take care of others and are paid with funds that partially come from the state cannot be unionized because they are not state workers. It also opened the door for Michigan daycare workers involved in a previous, separate scheme to revisit a class action...

A Gresham man is charged with attempted murder after he fired on a group of people leaving a party Friday night, only to be shot himself by one of the victims, a military service member with a concealed carry permit, authorities said Sunday. The military member and three others were leaving a party Friday night in the 11700 block of South Union Avenue in West Pullman, Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Hain said in Cook County Bond Court. One of the victims noticed a cup of liquor on top of her vehicle and asked attendees of a party next door who...

Independence Day celebrations were marred by multiple shootings in Chicago that reportedly left at least seven dead and 50 injured. The first fatal shooting occurred around 2:30 a.m. Friday, kicking off a violent weekend for the city. The city has been actively combating gang and shooting violence in recent years after a bloody year in 2012, when it was the only city in the nation to record more than 500 homicides. The Chicago Tribune updated its tally of Chicago shooting victims today, bringing up the total of those shot to 1,129 so far this year. According to the Tribune, there...

Alan Dixon, who served two terms in the U.S. Senate from Illinois, died this morning at his home in downstate Fairview Heights, according to his son. Dixon had been experiencing heart problems in recent months, his son Jeff Dixon said. He would have turned 87 on Monday. Dixon, a Democrat, served in the Senate from 1981 until 1993. He was defeated by Carol Moseley Braun in the Democratic primary, his first political loss in more than 40 years of public life.

Because he posed a threat to Dick Durbin’s US Senate election in 1996, Illinois Republican Al Salvi was threatened by a United States government official. That official was Lois Lerner and she was using her position as a representative of the Federal Election Commission. In the course of her FEC inquisition of Salvi for alleged election law violations, Lerner made a statement that amounts to extortion. Following the Chicago way, Durbin made a series of FEC complaints against Salvi and Lerner took the point in handling his case. According to Salvi, at one point Lerner made an offer to him...

Among the rival locations in Chicago for the Obama library and museum, the most majestic one hugs the Lake Michigan shore on the Southeast Side with a stunning view of the Chicago skyline. More than pretty, the Chicago Lakeside site has vast potential to trigger massive related economic growth and create jobs in an often ignored part of the city. With a presidential library and museum as an anchor, large-scale private investment that otherwise might take a generation to occur could happen in a decade. “It is the most incredibly beautiful site in the city of Chicago,” developer Dan McCaffery...

Doctor Roy wrote: If you are going to make voting contingent on paying taxes I don't know what else you could call it [but a poll tax]. I still don't know what you guys are talking about with this " white guilt" malarkey. Obama came along at exactly the right time. Hell I'm an agnostic and I might have gottten elected if I got to follow Dubya's train wreck. - Equality! Obama's the Worst! Dear Comrade Doctor, I always have trouble understanding if you are as dumb as you pretend to be. I’d like to give you the benefit of...

New research takes a look at decades of corruption convictions to find the crookedest states in the union. When we think of government corruption (as one tends to do), our biased minds often gravitate to thoughts of military juntas and third world governments. But, of course, corruption is everywhere, in one form or another. And it’s costing U.S. citizens big time. A new study from researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University estimates that corruption on the state level is costing Americans in the 10 most corrupt states an average of $1,308 per year, or 5.2% of...

At least 13 people have been shot in Chicago at the start of the long holiday weekend, including a woman killed as she sat on a porch near Garfield Park and a man slain in front of a hair salon on the South Side, police said. ... The mother of the boy, Andrea Byes, said she is planning to move out of the two-flat where she lives with her children because of the violence, drug sales and loitering on the block. "I'm not surprised something like this happened," said Byes, 40. "It was a matter of time. They're all over...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Among the rival locations in Chicago for the Obama library and museum, the most majestic one hugs the Lake Michigan shore on the Southeast Side with a stunning view of the Chicago skyline. More than pretty, the Chicago Lakeside site has vast potential to trigger massive related economic growth and create jobs in an often ignored part of the city. With a presidential library and museum as an anchor, large-scale private investment that otherwise might take a generation to occur could happen in a decade. “It is the most incredibly beautiful site in the city of Chicago,”...

---behind a firewall but article is about 800 denials of concealed carry permits without explanation--pictured is recent Air Force veteran ,clean record, honorable discharge--denied --lawsuits are being filed--

yesterday's decision in a key Illinois Supreme Court case has set off a first-class explosion in state and local government, potentially punching tens of billions of dollars in holes in their collective budgets. Some elements of the court's decision are drawing intense debate. But if the overnight consensus is anywhere near correct, everyone from City Hall and the Capitol to your local village and school board will have little option now but to dig deep, cut services and raise taxes a lot — and labor unions little incentive to compromise. "The law in Illinois is now crystal clear: Politicians cannot...

Gun-rights advocates have delivered a one-two punch to the city of Chicago. The first blow came on Jan. 6 when a federal judge ruled the city’s longtime ban on gun stores was unconstitutional. On Thursday, the second blow landed when the judge approved $940,000 in legal fees that the city must pay to the attorneys who challenged the ban. Charles J. Cooper, one of those plaintiffs’ attorneys, charged $975 an hour for his work. Cooper, whose law firm Cooper & Kirk is based in Washington, is also looking for a big payout from the state. He submitted a $618,000 bill...

“Vote the man, not the party” is, in this day and age, just about the worst political advice you can offer. And not just because you might want to vote for a woman. Parties rule modern politics, and any points of differentiation between the candidate and the party are likely to be resolved in favor of the latter. As a candidate, Barack Obama differed from many Democrats in his (home-state-related) support for coal and disdain for the individual mandate. He reversed both. Grover Norquist endorsed this same accurate, cold-blooded, structuralist view of things when he told his Party in 2012,...

Welcome to Illinois! The Land of Lincoln… home to the City of the Big Shoulders… a great place to get a thick, round, casserole-like dish which the locals mysteriously refer to as “pizza.” One thing that you probably shouldn’t hope to get in Illinois, though, is a job. Because from August of last year until this May the entire state managed to generate … 900 of them. A report by the Illinois Policy Institute finds that only 500 jobs were created in the state from August 2013 to May 2014, ranking it among the worst in the country over...

Any day now, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is due to put out its ruling that could answer the most fundamental of questions: Were Blagojevich’s actions in fact criminal? During appellate arguments, which I watched in December, U.S. Appeals Judge Frank Easterbrook, formerly the chief judge of the panel, grilled government attorneys on some of the basics of the case. It was almost jarring to watch justices question the very essence of charges that had been under a public microscope for five years. Easterbrook appeared incredulous after asking if prosecutors could cite “any criminal conviction in U.S. history”...

A key former adviser behind President Obama's healthcare law said the traditional role of health insurers would be "dead" by 2025, predicting massive changes in the industry. "By 2025, insurance companies as we know them — taking in premiums and paying out — dead," Ezekiel Emanuel ... Emanuel, the older brother of former White House chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has long argued that health insurers will shift away an employer-based system. By 2025.. ... Most Americans currently receive health insurance through their employers. ObamaCare includes an employer mandate, which requires companies with 50 or more...

Severe weather will lash through areas from the Midwest to the Great Lakes into Tuesday, hitting some of the major cities in the United States, including Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit.