Free Republic

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - At first, Mexico's government did its best to ignore Donald Trump. Then it likened him to Adolf Hitler. Now it has appointed a new ambassador to come up with a better plan. Fed up with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination labeling Mexico as a cradle of drug-runners, job poachers and rapists, the government is sending in respected diplomat Carlos Sada to lead a fightback. Mexico's new ambassador in Washington, Sada acknowledges his country has neglected its image across the border and aims to fix that with PR and media campaigns, and by lobbying prominent...

In a complicated political season, nobody has more complications to worry about than the half-dozen Republican senators seeking re-election in tight, swing-state contests. Those senators–hailing from Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina—are being buffeted by big forces largely out of their control as they try to hang onto their seats. Their fate will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, where they currently have a 54-46 advantage. The predicament of these GOP senators comes into clearer focus in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, completed just last week, which helps crystallize three big complications they...

Three people were killed and at least 20 others have been wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening. The most recent homicide happened early Sunday in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

resident Obama argued that the US does not have more people in prison than any other developed country “because we have more criminals. It’s because we have criminal justice policies, including unfair sentencing laws, that need to be reformed.” He added “simply locking people up doesn’t make communities safer” because “It doesn’t deal with the conditions that lead people to criminal activity in the first place, or to return to prison later.”

A Senate bill that would allow families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi government has achieved a rare Washington distinction, by uniting the Obama administration and some of its fiercest GOP critics. President Barack Obama and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are rallying to kill the bipartisan plan that would make it possible for American citizens to sue foreign governments believed to be linked to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said the plan should be reviewed through regular order before decisions are made about advancing the measure. White House Press...

Republican groups, leaders and candidates opposed to Donald Trump increasingly see the Indiana primary as a central front in their last-ditch efforts to stop him from clinching the GOP presidential nomination. But fractures in the movement, and a clear lack of urgency among local Republicans to unite against Trump, are undercutting their ability to deliver the state.

With the city facing the threat of a teachers strike, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis focused attention on Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday in an incendiary speech that likened the Republican governor's actions to terrorism. "Rauner is the new ISIS recruit," Lewis said during an address at a packed City Club of Chicago luncheon, using a term that refers to the Islamic State terrorist group. "Yes, I said it, and I'll say it again," Lewis continued. "Bruce Rauner is a liar. And, you know, I've been reading in the news lately all about these ISIS recruits popping up all...

Surveillance video shows more than a dozen people doing nothing to help a Chicago bartender as he is attacked, left unconscious on the street and accidentally run over by a taxi. Marques Gaines later died at a hospital. The family of 32-year-old Gaines has filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against several businesses and taxi companies in his Feb. 7 death. …

Chicago Blackhawks’ forward Andrew Shaw has been suspended for one game after using a homophobic slur twice during Tuesday night’s playoff loss against the St. Louis Blues. The league announced the suspension Wednesday along with a $5,000 fine for "directing an inappropriate gesture at the on-ice officials" during the game. Shaw will also be required to undergo sensitivity training, according to the NHL. The suspension means Shaw will miss Game 5 of the team's series against the Blues, where they are facing elimination.

A new cluster of Elizabethkingia infection, previously rarely seen in humans, has been found in Illinois, health officials said Wednesday. Testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the Elizabethkingia anophelis infection in 10 Illinois residents, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Six of those individuals have died. Most of the infected patients had underlying health conditions, and it's unknown if they died from the infection or pre-existing conditions.

Living for nearly half a century in the United States offers no guarantee that one can stay. That is the reality facing Cuban exile activist Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, who received a letter Thursday from the federal government....

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CBS) – Gov. Pat Quinn and the leaders of both houses of the Illinois General Assembly have agreed on raising the state income tax. If the bill passes, the plan would raise the personal income tax rate from the current 3 percent to 5.25 percent. That’s a 75 percent increase. In real dollars, that would mean if you currently owe $1,000 in taxes, next year you would owe $1,750. The increase is for four years. After that, the personal income tax would go down to 3.75 percent. The Democratic leaders in the Illinois General Assembly believe this income...

A new Mexican movie promoted by Univision host Jorge Ramos portrays a drunk vigilante motivated by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rant killing at least four illegal immigrants at the border. The trailer for the movie, Desierto, now in Mexican theaters, blasts out Trump's initial criticism of illegal immigrants as a man armed with a rifle guns down targets crossing under barbed wire.

Damond Dawson was "goofing around" with his brother and other relatives and friends, rapping and shooting video in Foster Park when two gunmen opened fire early Tuesday, killing Dawson and wounding four others, according to police and relatives.“Basically like an ambush," said Dawson's aunt, Angela Mathis-Tate, 44. “One coming west of the park and one coming south." The shooting happened around 2:20 a.m. as Dawson, 23, and a small group were “rapping around (taking) selfies with their phones” at Foster Park at 1440 W. 84th St, according to relatives.Dawson was shot once in the back of the head and collapsed...

An estimated 45.3% of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax ... The top 1% of taxpayers pay a higher effective income-tax rate than any other group (around 23%, according to a report released by the Tax Policy Center in 2014) — nearly seven times higher than those in the bottom 50%. On average, those in the bottom 40% of the income spectrum end up getting money from the government. Meanwhile, the richest 20% of Americans, by far, pay the most in income taxes, forking over nearly 87% of all the income tax...

Even on days when the temperature is above zero, Illinois struggles to keep people here. They're leaving, in droves, for states with sunnier economic opportunities. New census data and other figures reveal the cold hard truth: More people are moving away than coming, tipping Illinois last year into the dreadful category of states with declining populations. From July 2013 to July 2014, Illinois shrank by about 10,000 residents in all, joining other states in decline such as West Virginia, Connecticut and Alaska. When demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution analyzed the annual Census Bureau estimates, two facts jumped out...

Illinois' public school districts are roughly $20 billion in debt, a staggering figure fueled in part by decades of special deals in Springfield that have given districts exemptions so they can keep borrowing beyond limits set by law. Today, that debt exceeds long-term school borrowing in most other states. It equates to about $10,000 for every Pre-K to 12th-grade public school student in Illinois... All the borrowing is a drain on taxpayers who have to repay the debt, as well as school budgets that must steer billions of dollars annually to principal and interest payments — money that could be...

Illinois' 859 local school districts consume nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in local property taxes collected across the state each year. Illinois has nearly 7,000 units of local government. That’s the highest count of any state in the nation, and the runner-up is not even close. One of those units of government is the Naperville Township Road District, where seven employees maintain less than 20 miles of road at a cost of $116,000 per mile. City officials have said they could maintain the same distance at half the cost, and have moved to take over the road district’s duties...

DePaul University students, don't fear! There will be no more political "chalking" at your school. Apparently, someone wrote - with chalk - on a campus sidewalk last week: "Make DePaul Great Again." The message sent students and staff into a tailspin. The xenophobia! The bigotry! The racism! "While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception," DePaul's vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform....

The Illinois Senate is considering a bill that will tax drivers 1.5 cents per mile they drive, because of a loophole in the state’s current gas taxation law that excuses owners of electric cars, starting July 2017.“If all the cars were electric, there would be no money for the roads,” Illinois State Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago paper. “The Prius owners are the reason we need this bill.”The bill, which Cullerton is spearheading, said car owners or lessees can choose one of three ways by which the state will measure mileage. Two of those ways involve...