Free Republic

How many nine-year-old Antonio's need to die in Chicago before the national media will park its satellite trucks in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Hall and demand answers and action. How many black people, including black children, need to die in Chicago before the national media stops counting civilian casualties in Gaza as a political weapon against Israel and starts counting them in one of our own cities. Overnight in Chicago 10 people were shot. One night. One. How many more until the national media cares enough to look into the root causes of the violence, poverty, despair, terrible...

Over the past six years, Chicago has become a top potential target for international terrorists, a top security expert said Friday, making the posting of a veiled threat by Islamic radicals on Twitter a higher cause for concern. “Many terror organizations refer to Chicago as Obama Town,” said CBS 2 security expert Ross Rice, a former FBI agent in Chicago. Under President Obama, the U.S. took out Osama bin Laden, and used repeated drone strikes to weaken terror networks. In the meantime, the U.S. government on Friday issued a security bulletin to all U.S. law enforcement in light of the...

There is another chilling Chicago connection in the battle between the US. and extreme Islamic militants isil (ISIS). First there’s the beheading of the journalist who was the Northwestern graduate. Now WGN Investigates has found an online war of words and disturbing images that includes an implied threat to a Chicago landmark building.

Thousands of drivers in New Jersey were caught on camera allegedly running red lights but were never informed of the potential fines they faced because of a technical glitch. And the state Judiciary has asked local courts to throw out all 17,000 alleged infractions. The state lawmaker who today brought the issue to the public’s attention — Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon —said it's is just the latest example of why New Jersey’s red light camera should not be renewed when it reaches its December expiration date. ... The news of the glitch comes just days after the former CEO of Redflex...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Former Country Club Hills, Ill., police chief Regina R. Evans, 50, pled guilty to charges of fraud related to a $1.25 million state grant awarded in 2009 to We Are Our Brother’s Keeper, a not-for-profit program that Evans owned with her husband, Ronald W. Evans, Jr. Regina Evans appeared before U.S. District Judge Sue E. Myerscough and entered an open plea of guilty to the following charges: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering (one count); wire fraud (three counts); and money laundering (seven counts.) There is no plea agreement between the government and Evans.

If you saw a Native American walking across the street, would you yell out, “Hey, Redskin, you dropped your hat’’? I don’t believe you would, no matter how strongly you feel that the Washington Redskins should be able to keep their nickname. And I don’t believe Mike Ditka would, either, even though he has come out strongly on the side of intolerance, whether he realizes it or not. The say-anything coach went off on those of us who want to see the Redskins nickname go the way of medical bloodletting. In an interview with RedskinsHistorian.com — you always save up...

The Schiller Park, Ill., bakery, where Twinkies were invented in 1930, will close according to an announcement by Hostess Brands on Wednesday....

Malignant Neglect: The president talks about Ferguson, Mo., but not about a Chicago weekend where three dozen people were shot, seven of them killed, including a 16-year-old black girl who wanted to be a doctor. To his credit, President Obama was more judicious than usual talking about the shooting of Michael Brown outside St. Louis. He did not say the police acted stupidly. He actually made a rare attempt at acknowledging individual responsibility when he said that when young black men "commit a crime, they need to be prosecuted, because every community has an interest in public safety." One of...

Voters in the city that launched President Barack Obama's political career are split over whether to put tax dollars into luring his presidential library to Chicago. Less than half of those surveyed in a Chicago Tribune poll — 47 percent — said they favored the idea of using tax money to attract or build the library, while 45 percent said they opposed it and 8 percent were undecided. There was a gap along racial lines: 61 percent of black voters polled were in support and 60 percent of white voters opposed. The survey was taken as the Barack Obama Foundation...

Scroll down to Reader Opinion poll at bottom towards the right

You would think that after police in Bali found the body of her dead mother in a suitcase in a taxi, the last thing on the mind of Heather Lois Mack would be what she’s being given to eat right now ,But the imprisoned, pregnant 19-year-old from the wealthy suburb of Oak Park near Chicago has been complaining about how bad the food is behind bars. “Heather complains about the food and that she is not being well-treated in jail, nevertheless police treat the prisoners all the same,” said Djoko Hari Utomo, chief of police for the Balinese capital Denpasar,...

While rioting and racial tension continues in Ferguson, Missouri over the controversial shooting death of Michael Brown there was a ho hum, business as usual, nothing-we-can-do-about-it attitude towards the following headline  in the Chicago Tribune regarding shooting deaths that was probably similar to others across the nation over the week end.   Three people were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, and sixteen others injured in shootings across the city between late Saturday morning and early Sunday morning, police said. The majority of the victims--and most probably the shooters--in Chicago were black; the others Hispanic.  And yet, except for grieving family...

Five people have been killed and at least 27 others wounded in weekend shootings across Chicago.

Three people were killed and sixteen others injured in shootings across the city between late Saturday morning and early Sunday morning, police said.

Vice News Live Feed. They were in the middle of the action last night.

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash America’s fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and “fundamentally transform” our economic, social, legal and constitutional system. Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. He’s proud that...

A Monday night meeting over a Palestinian flag in north suburban Lincolnwood was intense but civil much of the way before emotions spilled over among some in attendance, with one man leaving after being chastised by the mayor. The flag that was the subject of heated debate is part of a display of about 60 international flags along Lincoln Avenue that stretches from Devon to Touhy. Several residents have recently asked that the Palestinian flag be removed, but village officials say they have no plans to do so. Community members spoke in favor of and against the flag before the...

SPRINGFIELD — Raise the minimum wage! Release your tax returns, Bruce Rauner and Jim Oberweis! Rich guys who “stash” their money in the Cayman Islands can’t relate to the average Illinois Joe! Hammering it all home, a new, black-tuxedoed and top-hatted character debuted, dubbed “Baron Von Moneybags,” patterned after the Monopoly character, Milburn Pennybags. The satirical likeness allied with Gov. Pat Quinn waved a sign that read “.01%ers for Rauner!” As that example of political theater and all of the day’s sloganeering showed, Wednesday was all about class warfare as Illinois Democrats converged on the State Fair facing their iffiest...

The former CEO of the company at the heart of Chicago's red light camera bribery scandal has been indicted by a federal grand jury. Karen Finley — the 54-year-old former boss of Redflex Traffic Systems — was indicted Wednesday, three months after city worker John Bills was charged with soliciting bribes to help Redflex win the city's lucrative red light camera contract, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting. . . . . . But evidence of unexplained spikes in tickets issued at intersections since then means the red light program remains a political headache for Emanuel.

Sheila Von Weise Mack was last seen alive on Monday when an argument she had with her daughter was captured by surveillance cameras in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel in Denpasar, Bali A Chicago woman vacationing in Indonesia was killed -- her body stuffed inside a suitcase earlier this week -- and her daughter and another man were arrested. The body of 62-year-old Sheila Von Weise Mack was discovered on Tuesday in a suitcase in the back of a taxi, parked at the prestigious St. Regis Hotel in Denpasar. Mack's daughter, Heather Lois, 19, and another man, 21-year-old...