Free Republic

DEVELOPING: An appeals court has overturned some of the corruption convictions of imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. he 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago released its ruling Tuesday.

Construction on the new Interstate 74 Bridge is supposed to be done by 2020, but money – and time – is running out. On Saturday, July 11th, 2015, Representative Cheri Bustos visited the Quad Cities to meet with local leaders about federal funding. Right now, Congress is trying to pass a highway bill to fix and fund our area’s infrastructure. However, if they don’t find a solution by July 31st, 2015, federal funding for those projects – like the I-74 Bridge – will end. Monday, July 13th, 2015, a spokesman for Bustos said that if federal funding for the project...

"Granny's got a gun" was the headline on the television news report the day Ramona Taylor-Kamate was mugged on a crowded bus in Detroit. Taylor-Kamate, then 56, told WJBK News that she struggled with the young man who grabbed her purse in January 2013. He tried to flee when the bus stopped, but she held on and followed him onto the sidewalk. When he reached for his boot, she thought he was going for a gun — so she pulled out her own pistol and fired 11 times. He escaped. Rauner OKs changes to concealed carry law as state gun...

Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues, 50% Of Their Cash That Will Have Go To Pensions. [ Full title ]. ... When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring debt, volatile equities and heavy-handed intervention; Japan with its stratospheric debt and science fictiony demographics; Greece, which needs no explanation; the developing countries with their weak currencies and mountain of dollar-denominated debt. And of course America’s triple bubble of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Underfunded...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Just hours after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a controversial comment about 2008 presidential candidate John McCain's military record, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham came out swinging in defense of McCain. Additional Links Trump on John McCain: 'I like people who weren't captured' The Latest: Rick Santorum favors curbs on legal immigration Trump, in a campaign visit in Iowa, told a crowd of supporters he was not a fan of McCain. “He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people who weren’t captured.” In a series of tweets posted to...

Representative Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) referred to the death of Kate Steinle as a “little thing” on Telemundo on Saturday. Gutierrez, during a report on the debate over sanctuary cities after the death of Kate Steinle, first flagged and translated by Newsbusters, said, “Every time a little thing like this happens, they use the most extreme example to say it must be eliminated.”

It’s no secret that since 1992 the publicly-funded John H. Stronger, Jr. Hospital in Chicago has been doing abortions. However, now the hospital may have a dilemma on their hands because their name appears in the transcripts from the video with Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, explaining how the abortion giant sells body parts of aborted babies. Today the Illinois Review reported that the transcripts reveal that Dr. Nucatola suggested to the actors posing as buyers to check in with the hospital’s family planning director to see if they can connect and collect fetal body parts after abortions....

City officials are pushing property-tax hikes, sales-tax hikes, and even a commuter tax and financial-transaction tax. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s wish for a $474 million sales-tax increase to help pay for the county’s growing pension debt has been granted. The hike pushes the sales-tax rate back up to 10.25 percent in Chicago – the same as it was when Preckwinkle took office in 2010. And that’s not the only new tax residents have to face. Preckwinkle is just the latest local leader to usher in a tax increase. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a new tax earlier this...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is moving to block future State Department funding and nominees unless President Barack Obama guarantees that Congress will have the authority to fully review a recently inked nuclear accord with Iran before the deal is approved by the United Nations, according to a copy of a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Cruz, a vocal opponent of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, maintains that the White House is seeking to circumvent congressional review of the deal by going straight to the U.N. Such a move could lift key sanctions on Iran before Congress has...

A man was charged with killing a 13-month-old baby while fleeing police after the shooting of Chicago rapper Capo, prosecutors said Monday. Antoine Watkins, 21, plowed over Dillan Harris as police chased him after seeing him walk "calmly" away from the murder scene Saturday, prosecutors said. Watkins has been charged only in the baby's death "at this point," not in the murder of Capo, whose real name was Marvin Carr, prosecutors said. "You killed my f---ing baby!" a woman howled during Watkins' bond hearing Monday before she was escorted out of the Cook County courtroom, according to DNAInfo. . .

The three girls walked down to Riis Park on the Northwest Side to feed bread to the ducks in the lagoon, as they do every day. It was one of their favorite spots in the Belmont Central neighborhood. But on this Wednesday evening, they were stopped by a large swath of yellow police tape across the southern edge of the park, marking off where a 16-year-old boy was shot dead and a 15-year-old boy was wounded minutes before. "It makes me very concerned," said Karina Munoz, 16. "It makes me feel not safe anymore. It makes me feel like this...

A Democratic congressman wants millions of people who hold U.S. green cards to become American citizens in order to send Donald Trump and other Republicans a message that they're 'mean and frankly, let’s be honest, racist.' Louis Gutierrez, who is the senior House Democrat from Illinois and a Puerto Rican immigrant, spoke on the House floor just after 10:00 Wednesday morning, delivering a message especially to more than 5 million Hispanic U.S. residens who are eligible for citizenship today. 'Every time you see Trump’s face on your TV, vow to learn a little more English or a few more history...

Mayor Michael Coleman announced Wednesday the termination of the city’s contract with Redflex, effective immediately. Redflex is the company that handled Columbus’ red light camera program before a state law forced the city to cease issuing citations. The announcement comes after a Redflex executive pleaded guilty to charges relating to bribing public officials. “Based upon the City’s contract authority, we will be terminating the contract with Redflex immediately,” said Mayor Coleman. “I support a photo red light camera program because it saves lives, however the actions of the Redflex executives have raised questions about the integrity of their program.”

Cook County Board today cleared the way for President Toni Preckwinkle's plan to raise the county's sales tax a penny on the dollar, mostly for pensions. The action came when the board's Finance Committee, which includes all board members, voted 9 to 7 to 1 to send the $474 million a year tax hike to the full board, which will consider it later today. The key votes came from Commissioner Luis Arroyo, a Chicago Democrat who voted "yes," and suburban Republican Elizabeth Gorman, who cast a "present" ballot and who is widely rumored to soon be headed to a new,...

At least 12 people were wounded in shootings across Chicago on Tuesday. The latest shooting happened about 9:50 p.m. in West Englewood, where a 19-year-old man was walking in the 1700 block of West 61st Place when he heard gunshots and realized he’d been struck in the leg. A couple hours earlier, a 19-year-old man was shot in the shoulder in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Three people were shot in the Brighton Park neighborhood less than 20 minutes earlier. About 7:35 p.m., the three males — ages 17, 18 and 19 — were outside. About 6:45 p.m., a 17-year-old boy...

Michael Brown Sr., father of Michael Brown Jr., whose death sparked riots in Ferguson, Mo., said he was disturbed and disgusted by the display of his son’s body in a Chicago exhibit designed to shame white privilege that opened last Friday.“I would really really like them to take it down. I think it’s really disturbing and disgusting,” said Brown Sr. in a tearful interview with Fox 2 St. Louis.The exhibit is called “Confronting Truth: Wake Up” and opened July 10th. According the interview, Brown Sr. had never even been contacted about the exhibit until it opened.“Confronting Truth” was put together...

IM Global and producers State Street Pictures have launched production in Chicago on “Southside With You,” the romantic dramedy inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. The film is focused on the 1989 date when a young Obama — portrayed by Parker Sawyers — was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson (played by Tika Sumpter) on a summer afternoon and evening. The date took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.

The Midgets are under attack. Freeburg High School, in the Metro East area of St. Louis, was approached last week by members of the Little People of America and asked to change their nickname. The athletic teams at Freeburg have been known as the Midgets since the 1930s. The Little People were in the area for their convention in St. Louis and made a trip to Freeburg to let school officials that they were offended by the school's nickname. The Little People of America posted a petition on change.org asking that Freeburg change its mascot. "The term ‘midge' dehumanizes and...

We at the NRA have seen a lot of strange legal theories asserted by gun control advocates over the years, but a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by a group of Chicagoans still managed to distinguish itself in this dubious tradition by asserting that the plaintiffs have a “civil right” to specific forms of gun control. The basis of the lawsuit is a May 27, 2014 “study” published by the City of Chicago entitled, “Tracing the Guns: The Impact of Illegal Guns on Violence in Chicago.”The report finds that a disproportionate number of guns recovered from crime scenes in Chicago from 2009...

Cocaine, it's a hell of a drug. Obama just set this guy free. And a whole bunch of his friends. Cocaine, it's a hell of a drug. And Obama, who wrote of using it in the past, still seems to have a soft spot for its dealers even though he no longer imbibes. His "pardons" mainly focus on cocaine dealers. Of his 46 pardons, 41 involved cocaine. Despite the lefty obsession with racial inequality in crack cocaine sentencing, only a minority of the pardons involved crack cocaine. Crack was not Obama's drug of choice. But just to be fair, he...