Free Republic

Many of the exact same groups that participated in Occupy Wall Street and helped organize protest rallies in Ferguson and Baltimore are now promising to bring us “the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation”. I recently wrote about the trouble that radical leftists have caused by attempting to disrupt Trump campaign events, but now there is a very organized effort to turn this into a national movement. On March 19th, thousands of angry protesters will descend on Trump Tower in New York City to denounce Donald Trump’s “fascist policies”, and on April 2nd dozens of leftist organizations will join...

Circle this date on your calendar: April 22. I’ll be in Chicago that day attending what may be a very significant milestone in American politics and domestic policy. It’s going to be a wake and a wake-up call, part memorial and part protest.If you are a so-called American “STEM worker” in science, technology, engineering or math, if you have college-age children studying in the STEM fields, or if you have younger children who aspire to work in STEM industries and you are concerned for their future, you should do everything you can to join us.April 22 is the last day...

Karen Winters knows how easily boys are drawn to a life of violence in the Homan Square neighborhood. But she still can't understand how her 16-year-old nephew ended up shot to death after allegedly confronting a Chicago police officer with a gun Monday evening. "Once again, we're looking at environment, this community. How some of these young boys are just plagued with certain influences," Winters said Tuesday. "But not to this extent, by no means." Police say the officer shot Pierre Loury after stopping a car suspected of being connected to an earlier shooting. Officers pulled the car over around...

Three and a half decades after avoiding punishment for bombing the Pentagon, Bill Ayers is still "guilty as sin, free as a bird," to use his own phraseology of 35 years ago. "For every human being life is, in part, an experience of suffering and loss and pain," Ayers writes in Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World: An Invitation, published by the Teacher's College Press at Columbia University this year. "But our living experience also embraces other inescapable facts: that we are all in this together, and that much (but not all) of what we suffer in life is...

Former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds is in federal custody following his arrest Monday morning at the Atlanta airport, federal authorities confirmed. U.S. District Judge John Darrah issued an arrest warrant for Reynolds at the end of March after the former congressman missed a court appearance to remain in South Africa at the side of his daughter. Reynolds said she was facing spinal surgery and is possibly suffering from cervical cancer.

union hypocrisy and betrayal of its membership ... a series of loopholes that cut union workers out of the very pay increases their leaders have championed. ... written into the fine print of wage ordinances in a dozen California cities at labor leaders’ urging. San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Santa Monica have all adopted union waivers in their most recent minimum wage laws. L.A. city officials are expected to indicate whether they will include such an exemption in their own $15 minimum wage at a hearing next week. ... Thanks to the “union waivers” agreed to by union leaders,...

The Golden State Warriors have equaled the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ record for wins in a season, and they’ve still got a little room to move. The defending champs topped San Antonio on Sunday night by a 92-86 score, in San Antonio’s building, running its record to 72-9. With a win over a depleted Memphis squad on Wednesday night Golden State will finish its season at 73-9, setting an NBA record for wins in a season. Sunday’s conquest fittingly came against San Antonio, the team that has played the Warriors the best this season, one that features a coach in Gregg...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s endorsement of Rep. Paul Ryan for Speaker of the House has drawn new attention to Ryan’s two-decade history of pushing for open borders immigration policies. A previously little noticed 2013 video of Ryan and Gutierrez stumping for Sen. Marco Rubio's amnesty bill—in which the two make a candid pitch for unlimited immigration—shows just how far Ryan is willing to go to push for open borders policies. In the wide-ranging 53 minute video, which took place in Chicago, both Gutierrez and Ryan outline their shared plan for adopting open borders: that is, a national policy of allowing companies...

President Obama insisted Sunday that there will be no White House or political influence on the FBI or the Justice Department as they look into the security of the private email system Hillary Clinton used for government work when she was secretary of state. "I can guarantee that," Obama said in an interview with "Fox News Sunday." It was his first interview with the network in two years. Obama also defended his former secretary of state, even as he said that he had to be "careful" because of the ongoing investigation. He strongly suggested that the mishandled classified documents that...

The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Congress Supports Judicial Watch Taxpayer Lawsuit against DC Government What Does the FBI Have on the Obama Gang? The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Too often, politicians at every level will ignore the clear language of a law if it doesn’t let them do as they wish. This is evident on two fronts this week: in California and here in the District of Columbia. First California. You will recall that we filed a taxpayer lawsuit in August 2014 challenging a decision by the University of...

CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors on Friday for the first time provided details of sexual abuse allegations against J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, asserting that he molested at least four boys, as young as 14, when he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades ago. Mr. Hastert, 74, is not charged with the incidents of abuse because of statutes of limitation, prosecutors said, but he was accused last year of illegally structuring bank withdrawals for money he was paying to one of his victims in an effort to hide the abuse. He pleaded guilty in October...

Speaking at the University of Chicago Law School on Thursday, President Barack Obama was asked by an audience member how his nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court would bring “diverse characteristics” to that court. In answering, Obama argued: “I have transformed the federal courts from a diversity standpoint with a record that’s been unmatched.” He also said: “But at no point did I say: ‘Oh, you know what, I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?’” …

President Barack Obama in his most emphatic terms yet disputed the idea that Donald Trump will win this presidential election. “I recognize that there is a deep obsession right now about Mr. Trump,” Obama told attendees of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser Thursday evening in Santa Monica, California. “And one of you pulled me aside and squeezed me hard and said, ‘Tell me that Mr. Trump is not succeeding you.’ And I said, ‘Mr. Trump is not succeeding me.’” Obama credited Trump and his primary rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for exposing “some of the nonsense that we’ve been...

The United States suggested Thursday it was open to a “new arrangement” with Iran for peacefully resolving disputes such as Tehran’s recent ballistic missile tests. Setting the stage for President Barack Obama’s summit with regional leaders in Saudi Arabia later this month, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to advance a series of proposals aimed at easing Arabs’ concerns about last year’s Iran nuclear deal and the warming of ties between the US and Iran. These include providing new counterterrorism, conventional military, missile defense and cybersecurity capabilities. Washington has...

The United States suggested Thursday it was open to a “new arrangement” with Iran for peacefully resolving disputes such as Tehran’s recent ballistic missile tests, while America’s Sunni allies in the Persian Gulf said Iran must stop sending forces to Syria and weapons to Yemen if it wants to normalize ties with its neighbors. Setting the stage for President Barack Obama’s summit with regional leaders in Saudi Arabia later this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to advance a series of proposals aimed at easing Arabs’ concerns about...

The Obama administration is now advising foreign banks on how to bypass existing U.S. sanctions when dealing with Iran, according to the State Department, which disclosed that officials are offering guidance on how to grant the Islamic Republic access to billions of dollars in frozen assets.However, the administration would not comment when pressed by reporters on whether foreign banks would be permitted to conduct monetary transactions with Iran using American dollars.State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that the U.S. is committed to helping Iran access billions of dollars in frozen assets that are currently stored in banks across...

(Video) Thursday at the University of Chicago Law School during a town hall meeting, President Barack Obama mocked the criticism that his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, did not add diversity to the bench. Obama said, “The way I thought about diversity is not to think about any single seat as, oh, I’ve got to fill this slot with this demographic but, rather, if I’ve got a broad set of nominees to make — and this is true across the board — how do I make sure that I’m intentional throughout that process? So that the talent of every

I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution on Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.” — Saul D. Alinsky. ... born in 1909 to Jewish Russian immigrants in a Chicago ghetto. .. Saul’s father instilled in his son a distrust of capitalism and minimized the connection between hard work and economic reward. ... Alinsky .. achieved entrée into Al Capone’s inner circle: ... Frank Nitti, known as the Enforcer, Capone’s number-two man, and actually in de...

For months, federal authorities have hinted at the motive behind the hush-money payments former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has admitted to making: the sexual abuse of a teenage boy when Hastert was still a suburban high school teacher and wrestling coach. But now, a Tribune investigation has uncovered new details of the case — at least four people have made what law enforcement sources say are credible allegations of sexual abuse against Hastert. The Tribune has determined the identities of three of them, all men, whose allegations stretch over a decade when they were teenagers and Hastert was their...

Millionaires are leaving Chicago more than any other city in the United States on a net basis, according to a new report.About 3,000 individuals with net assets of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, moved from the city last year, with many citing rising racial tensions and worries about crime as factors in the decision, according to research firm New World Wealth. That represented about 2 percent of the city's high net worth individuals.Cities in the United States that saw a net inflow of millionaires included Seattle and San Francisco.Chicago was among four cities worldwide with the...