Free Republic

Former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds couldn’t tell a federal magistrate judge Thursday where he planned to live as he awaits trial on misdemeanor charges of failing to file tax returns for four consecutive years. That’s because of lifetime restrictions on his residency stemming from his conviction decades ago for having sex with an underage campaign worker. After shooting down two possibilities Thursday — including a residence near a kids center in Bartlett and a Red Roof Inn in Indiana — U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez told him to return to her courtroom and try again Friday afternoon. His new defense...

Fred Gegare, who is challenging Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa in elections this month to head up the transport union, says that Hoffa and the US government are colluding to control the union by the use of intimidation. If true, the allegations could mean that 50 years of work trying to rid unions of mob influence has come to an end.  Hoffa and the Justice Department, says Gegare, have abused a decades-old consent decree, “which was once used to remove mobsters two decades ago, [but] is now being used to target [Hoffa’s] critics” through a “rogue investigative unit set up by...

Due to an objection with an Affordable Care Act mandate that requires health insurance plans to offer base birth control, Wheaton College has announced that it will no longer offer health insurance to its students to avoid conflicting with the institution's Christian convictions. The decision, announced to its students on July 10, effectively strips about a quarter of the suburban Chicago non-denominational liberal arts school's undergraduate and graduate students of their health care plans, which is about 700-plus individuals. As one of the most contested aspects of Obamacare has been the requirement for health insurance plans to provide birth control...

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago man who served 17 years in prison for murder before being cleared of the crime has been shot and killed almost three years after being released from prison, police said Wednesday. Alprentiss Nash, 40, was fatally shot Tuesday after an argument during "a drug deal gone bad" between Nash and his attacker, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. He said a suspect was in custody and charges were pending Wednesday afternoon. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said Nash died of multiple gunshot wounds. Guglielmi said two weapons were recovered, one belonging to the suspect...

PPP's newest Illinois poll finds that Mark Kirk's popularity is plummeting, and he trails Tammy Duckwo rth in a hypothetical match up. Kirk was already struggling when we last polled the state in February- only 28% of voters approved of the job he was doing to 32% w ho disapproved. After getting involved in a series of controversies over the last five months his numbers have turned even more in the wrong direction- now only 25% approve of him with his disapproval spiking up to 42%.

Half the guns used by criminals in Illinois gush in from states that do an even lousier job than Illinois of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. When a big city like Chicago is a national hub of the illegal drug trade — even El Chapo has competition in this town, as Sun-Times reporter Frank Main wrote Sunday — then stopping that flow of guns is essential. Now, finally, a leading voice of the Republican Party, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, on Sunday said what Chicago leaders have been saying for years: At least close...

Seven people have been killed and at least 34 others wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday afternoon, police said. Most recently, a 16-year-old boy was shot to death Sunday evening in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822 I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'...

More bad news for Chicago (and Illinois) taxpayers arrived Friday morning in a 35-page, double-sided packet. On one of the last pages: "The entire Act is void." Cook County Circuit Court Judge Rita Novak tossed out Chicago's pension reform law. City Hall had negotiated the pension changes for municipal and labor employees with many of the city's unions on board. But Novak, using the Illinois Supreme Court's May pension opinion as her sword, ruled that the city's plan violates the Illinois Constitution: A public worker's pension is a contract that cannot be "diminished or impaired." lRelated Revenge of the pension...

What a state to live in! What a state to die in. With nearly the full complement of lifely civic benefits for the deceased—voting and welfare receipt—Illinois is the place for the active, modern expired citizen. Until today. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has begun his attack on this recently vibrant Prairie State constituency by cutting benefits to them. Even food stamps will no longer flow to those who until recently needed daily sustenance. Only in Illinois.Gov. Bruce Rauner signed House Bill 3311 on July 21, requiring the Department of Human Services to conduct a monthly crosscheck of its aid...

At least 10 people were killed or found dead under suspicious circumstances since 3 p.m. Friday afternoon across Chicago. Among the dead were the decomposing bodies of a mother and her three children found in an East Chatham home with evidence of trauma and a fire that was never reported, and three men dead in a double-murder-suicide in the Mayfair neighborhood Friday afternoon. Thirty-five people were also wounded in shootings as far north as the Albany Park neighborhood and as far south as Roseland. Some of the wounded were in critical condition. No side of the city was without a...

In my current book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, I write of the phenomenon of Communist Party marriages. “Theirs was the first ‘party marriage’ that I observed,” wrote Whittaker Chambers in Witness, describing the decidedly non-sacramental marriage of two of his Communist Party comrades, before writing of his own “party marriages.” From Marx and Engels, to Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, to Betty Friedan and Kate Millett, to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, our comrades on the far left have bequeathed a legacy of noxious ideas on marriage and family. Their political-cultural...

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...