Free Republic

Federal regulators rebuked an Elgin demolition company and fined it $152,000 for safety violations leading to a worker's death on a Jane Addams Tollway bridge in Des Plaines this spring. Vicente Santoyo of Berwyn, a father of four, was standing in a lift cutting bracing between two beams to be removed from the bridge at Touhy Avenue when one rolled off a concrete support April 5, falling on him. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators cited Santoyo's employer and tollway subcontractor Omega Demolition Corp. for "overstressing" the 40-ton horizontal beam during demolition. That means the beam wasn't adequately supported,...

With 10 years remaining in its $12 billion road-building program, the Illinois tollway intends to start training workers to help finish the job. The aim is to increase the number of minorities working on tollway projects through a center teaching construction-related skills, officials said at a meeting Wednesday. The program is in the early stages, with diversity department planners still figuring out logistics, including funding. About $400,000 is allocated for 2017, although several tollway board directors advised staff members to budget for more. A 2015 tollway study concluded that blacks, Hispanics and women are underrepresented compared to whites when it...

Dive Brief: The Illinois Tollway announced Thursday that it had set a preliminary budget for 2017 that includes $951 million for Move Illinois projects, as well as $336 million for a maintenance and operation program, according to Equipment World.Major Move Illinois capital initiatives planned for next year include the Illinois Route 390 Tollway ($374.5 million), SmartRoad upgrades to I-90 ($163.5 million), reconstruction of I-294 ($56.5 million) and expansion and maintenance of the I-PASS system. The remaining funds will go toward development, repair and maintenance.Move Illinois is a 15-year, $12-billion capital project program financed by bonds and tolls. The Illinois Tollway,...

The federal government is recommending that former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s restitution in his corruption case be reduced from $4.5 million to $1.6 million. ... Kilpatrick was found guilty of tax evasion and bribery in 2013. He resigned as mayor in another scandal in 2008, and is currently in federal prison.

Karen Michel, a fan from Whiting, told MLB.com she was hoping that there might somehow be an extra ticket available at the Progressive Field box office. After being told the game was sold out, she spotted Murray walking by and decided to follow him. "He turns around and says, 'Here, here's a ticket,'" Michel told MLB.com. "And he kind of shuttled me into the door. I thought it was just a ticket to get in. But it was a ticket to sit right here." You can see her here next to Bill Murray. She got to sit in a $15,000...

According to the Chicago Tribune, of the 17 victims from this weekend's violence, 7 of them were under the age of 20, with the youngest victim being only 14. :: The weekend toll also was deadlier than the three long summer holiday weekends when violence typically spikes because of the warm weather. Six people were fatally shot over the Memorial Day weekend, five over the Fourth of July weekend and 13 people over Labor Day weekend, according to Tribune data. This past weekend there were shootings in every area of the city but the Far North and Northwest sides, according...

Flying home to New Jersey from Chicago after the first two days at his new job, Sergey Aleynikov was prepared for the usual inconveniences: a bumpy ride, a late arrival. He was not expecting Special Agent Michael G. McSwain of the F.B.I. At 9:20 p.m. on July 3, Mr. McSwain arrested Mr. Aleynikov, 39, at Newark Liberty Airport, accusing him of stealing software code from Goldman Sachs, his old employer. At a bail hearing three days later, a federal prosecutor asked that Mr. Aleynikov be held without bond because the code could be used to “unfairly manipulate” stock prices.

The most recent fatal shooting happened at 3:15 a.m. Sunday in the Old Town neighborhood on the North Side when two 17-year-old boys were killed during a drive-by shooting, police said. The teens were standing in the 1300 block of North Hudson Avenue when someone in a dark-colored vehicle drove by and began shooting at them. One of the 17-year-old boys was shot in the chest and the other teen was shot in the chest and in the head, police said. Both were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where one of the boys was pronounced dead at 3:45 a.m. while...

John Kass writes at the Chicago Tribune that in the face of the FBI reopening an investigation into the emails of Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State, it is time for her to “step down” as the Democratic Presidential nominee: Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday’s FBIannouncement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state? We’ll find out soon enough. It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling...

A couple of Chicago Cubs fans are fighting a bitter custody battle... of two precious baseball tickets. A divorcing suburban mother submitted an 'emergency petition for World Series tickets' this week, according to Cook County court documents obtained by the Associated Press Friday. Nancy Riddle wanted to the Cubs's Game 4 against the Cleveland Indians Saturday. But a judge's order says the tickets are held by her estranged husband and fellow Cubs fan John Riddle. Judge Marya Nega ruled after in-court arguments that the husband can keep the tickets for himself and the couple's 12-year-old son but should pay for...

I can't repost from the Twitter image: Said they "closed the office WEEKS ago" and never paid anyone! "We feel so used." Trump going to Chicago next week. What the hell is going on here. IL can't be in play is it?

The Chicago Board of Education gave final approval on Wednesday to the sale of up to $1 billion of new and refunding bonds for the junk-rated district. The third-largest public school system in the United States will sell up to $840 million of general obligation bonds through Barclays and JP Morgan Securities to fund capital improvements using a $45 million property tax hike approved by the Chicago City Council last year. The district will also restructure up to $160 million of variable-rate bonds into a fixed-rate mode through a yet-to-be-announced underwriting team. Emily Bittner, a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) spokeswoman,...

Susie Sallee was buried in 1998. Yet records show she voted in Chicago 12 years later. Victor Crosswell died in 1994, but records show he’s voted six times since then. And then there’s Floyd Stevens. Records show he’s voted 11 times since his death in 1993. “It’s crazy,” Sharon Stevens Anderson, Stevens’ daughter, tells CBS 2’s Pam Zekman. “I don’t see how people can be able to do something like that and get away with it.” Those are just a few of the cases CBS 2 Investigators found by merging Chicago Board of Election voter histories with the death master...

In a stunning moment during a Thursday night debate, an embattled U.S. senator cast doubt on his opponent’s military and ethnic heritage. Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), seeking to unseat GOP Sen. Mark Kirk in Illinois, invoked her family’s military service while answering a debate question.

As a 43-year-old lifelong Red Sox fan, I understand heartbreak. I know exactly what it’s like to be a Cubs fan as they hurtle toward another potential devastating post-season loss. That’s why I should be excited and rooting right along with Cubs Nation as they set their sights on their first World Series title since 1908. But I just can’t get into it. Why? Because their owner, the Ricketts family, has done more to kill constitutional conservative campaigns this election cycle than just about any group in America. Who are the Ricketts and how are they protecting Big Government RINOs...

I am waiting for his Mullah-ness to interject himself as the hero

Police: Group of robbers attacking victims walking downtown By Rob Elgas Friday, October 21, 2016 10:21PM CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago police issued a warning after multiple women were attacked downtown in the past week, one of them just blocks from Millennium Park. The suspects are working in large groups of five to eight young men and women. Police said they believe the offenders are teenagers. Police said the targets are women, mostly walking alone, on busy downtown streets. All the attacks happened before 11 p.m. The most recent robbery happened in the first block of East Van Buren Street on...

Dr. Quentin Young, Longtime Obama Confidante and Physician to MLK [Martin Luther King]FROM "THE OBAMA FILE"...RE: QUENTIN YOUNGThe primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago.  Young joined the Young Communist League as a teenager in the late 1930s.  From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party.  In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at...

Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats. Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library. “I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.” He notified the election judge at his polling place and...

Mark Malloch-Brown, a Britisher, is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Smartmatic International Corporation, an  ‘elections solutions provider’ that offers its voting machines, vote counting machines, software and techies to run elections all over the world.Mark Malloch-Brown also serves as Vice Chairman at George Soros’s international Open Society Foundation.Mark Malloch-Brown is so proud of his service to George Soros that he boasts of it on the Voting Machine Company’s website. On Election Day, a private company tied to Soros will manage the voting in 16 states, including voter registration, the printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the...