Free Republic

**SNIP** But the worst of the SLA’s crimes came on April 21, 1975. That’s when Kilgore and three comrades, all wearing ski masks, rushed the Crocker National Bank in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, ordering customers to get down and clerks to turn over money. One SLA member, Emily Harris, fatally shot Myrna Lee Opsahl, who was depositing funds for her church. (Harris, though claiming in court that it was an accident, had dismissed her victim as “a bourgeois pig,” Hearst said.) Opsahl wasn’t the only fatality that day, Dey noted: “Court documents allege that during the robbery, Kilgore’s girlfriend...

George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars," announced this week that he had chosen Chicago as the home of his new museum. Here's how the city and the movie series are remarkably alike: 1. An invisible power influences events, sometimes with negative results. In "Star Wars," it's The Force. In Chicago, it's The Clout. 2. Robots engage in predictable, often inane dialogue. In "Star Wars," there are R2-D2 and C-3PO. In Chicago, there are TV news anchors. 3. Story of a father and a son has great significance. In "Star Wars," it's Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In Chicago, it's the...

OLYMPIA FIELDS - Thousands of children from Central America are entering the United States through the nation's southern border, overburdening local facilities and resources. The crisis has the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the search for lodging facilities elsewhere in the states. One facility being considered is in Chicago's far southern suburbs - the quiet community of Olympia Fields. Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14) released a statement Saturday morning announcing this week the HHS will be conducting an inspection of a former monastery at 203rd and Governors Highway to be used to house some of the children that...

“Reinvigorating the leadership” is how one senior House staffer described the ascendency of Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who won a first-ballot victory for the position of GOP whip. The staffer went on to portray Scalise as not a member of the Washington establishment. Indeed, Scalise is a former chair of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the conservative caucus in the U.S. House. He has had a meteoric rise, and he is someone to be reckoned with. Scalise’s win follows Kevin McCarthy’s first-ballot victory for the GOP majority-leader slot. And here’s something I did not know: As whip, Scalise gets...

Remember these sixteen names when they run for office again. The sixteen Republicans who voted to proceed were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Susan Collins (Maine). Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dean Heller (Nev.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John McCain (Ariz.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). List courtesy The Hill.com. As reported by RedState yesterday, this bill would allow doctors to add a person’s name to the national database currently used for background checks, and list them as...

On this day in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, the newly-minted Republican candidate for the United States Senate, addressed the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield. His remarks included some of his more well-known words: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Although he lost the Senate seat to Stephen Douglas, he...

A leading supporter of Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn said that Republican voters are backers of the Ku Klux Klan and members of militias, according to local reports. Outspoken Chicago Pastor Walter “Slim” Coleman made the controversial remarks while standing beside Quinn, who was present to receive the reverend’s endorsement. Quinn’s support for divisive and racist rhetoric has been causing his campaign problems. The governor’s campaign came under fire in April after it tweeted messages urging backers to read an article comparing black Republican voters to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. Quinn stood by silently as Coleman compared Republicans...

President Obama’s senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett held a series of meetings with illegal immigrant activists during Obama’s first term and concluded that “They are the best that we have.” Jarrett, a Chicago-era mentor to Obama and wife Michelle, is currently fighting to pass immigration reform legislation, in her words, “this summer.” “I had met, maybe, a year-and-a-half ago, with about Four Dream Act kids,” Jarrett said in a 2012 conversation with Walter Isaacson at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, video of which was posted by The Aspen Institute in 2014.

After Michelle and Barry leave the White House – if they leave the White House, which is certainly up in the air – there are rumors afoot that they may emulate Bill and Hillary and take up residence as far away from each other as humanly possible.  To add intrigue to connubial conjecture, it is also alleged that Michelle may do a Hillary Clinton and run for a Senate seat in Illinois.Speculation abounds that when she’s not “playing politics with our kid’s health,” doing the Dougie on late-night talk shows, vacationing with mom and the girls, scolding schools begging to...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 6, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the Senate voted to confirm Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the new HHS Secretary to oversee the implementation of ObamaCare, states around the country were voting to protect the unborn, fighting for marriage, and wrestling with a wave of transgender “anti-discrimination” proposals that would allow biological men to use women's restroom and shower facilities. Florida The state of Florida is poised to protect children from abortion if they have the capacity to survive outside the womb. H.B. 1047, which would bar abortions after viability, passed the Senate by a party line 24-15 vote....

To insurance companies, there’s no doubt that climate change is here: They are beginning to file lawsuits against small towns and cities who they say haven’t prepared for the floods and storms that will cost the companies billions in payments. Earlier this week, the U.S. arm of a major global insurance company backed away from an unprecedented lawsuit against Chicago and its suburbs for failing to prepare for heavy rains and associated flooding it claimed were fueled by global warming. While legal experts said the case was a longshot, its withdrawal didn't alter the message it contained for governments: prepare...

First Lady could be positioning herself for a run at Mark Kirk's seat in 2016 By Ward Room StaffFLOTUS for Senate? It wasn't that long ago that such a slogan would seem absurd, but political wags are beginning to wonder whether Michelle Obama is mulling a run for Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk's seat in 2016. A Thursday column in Reuters suggests that Obama would be the only candidate with a large enough profile to unseat the Republican. The column also points to Obama's recent willingness to debate the merits of her school lunch program with Republicans, a trip to China,...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration closed three health facilities in 2012 but left behind tractors and a forklift, an unidentified medical specimen and boxes full of confidential patient and employee records, an audit released Thursday said. The Department of Human Services also failed to properly announce the closures — another state agency even delivered $1,000 worth of bread and juice to one facility a month after it closed, according to the report by Auditor General William Holland.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously smacked down the Illinois Supreme Court in President Barack Obama’s home state for violating the Fifth Amendment. Almost always the Supreme Court chooses to take a case (called granting a writ of certiorari) from a federal appeals court or a state supreme court by setting the case for briefing and argument. The Court receives 8,000 petitions for certiorari per year, and it grants fewer than 80.Yet in this case of Martinez v. Illinois, the justices took the very rare step of deciding the whole case just based on the petition filed with them requesting review. The...

Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the more vocal Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Newsmax he is "cautiously optimistic" about the outcome of Sunday's presidential election in Ukraine. But Kinzinger quickly added that the landslide election of billionaire "chocolate king" Petro Poroshenko "can't be the last step" for the United States and the European Union in dealing with Ukraine. .... A decorated U.S. Air Force veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Kinzinger spoke to Newsmax after participating in Memorial Day ceremonies on Monday in Braidwood, Illinois. "Poroshenko has been on a lot of different sides in Ukrainian...

Definitions of words and idioms that mean something else in Illinois; posted as a public service to the consumers of news: ASIAN CARP: A destructive monster that devours everything in its path, and is therefore a terrible threat to its rival, the state government. AUTUMN: The hour or two in which summer gives way to winter. BAIL BOND: The criminal promises to pay if he doesn’t show up for trial, and the city promises to look the other way while he commits more crimes until then. BIKE ROUTE: Adding 20% to the cost of building a road, increasing the danger...

**SNIP** Farnham is accused of using both personal and state-owned computers to trade hundreds of images and videos depicting child pornography and to engage in graphic online chats in which he allegedly bragged about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl. A federal criminal complaint alleges that Farnham, a Democrat from Elgin, possessed two videos depicting child pornography on a computer that was seized from his state office in Elgin a week before his abrupt resignation in March. Authorities also linked a Yahoo! email account used by Farnham to an online trading forum in which he chatted with other users about his...

A South Side pastor who is highly visible in Chicago’s black community endorsed Republican candidate Jim Oberweis on Thursday in his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. The Rev. Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago, said some Democrats had taken the African-American vote for granted and that black voters shouldn’t rule out candidates simply because of their party affiliation. Brooks, who is known as the “rooftop pastor” because he once slept for three months atop a shuttered motel to protest violence, cited Oberweis’ views on education and job creation as well the state senator’s visits to...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who suggested on Monday that "every institution" in America should ignore the nation's immigration laws until Congress passes amnesty legislation, said President George W. Bush will go down as the last Republican president in history if Congress does not act on immigration. "I give you George W. Bush--the man who will go down in history as the last Republican president in American history," Gutierrez said Tuesday on the House Floor. He added: If you do nothing on immigration, I guess you can take comfort in knowing that from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, you had...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- Former Illinois U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is serving the end of his 2-1/2-year sentence in a Montgomery federal prison, wants presidential pardons issued to all offenders who have served their time, according to a fellow inmate. Weeks after contacting Jackson inquiring about his ideas for prison reform, AL.com received emails from Jackson as well as a copy of a nine-page letter outlining his plan written by John P. Karoly Jr., an inmate Jackson knew during his stint at Butner Federal Prison in North Carolina. Jackson told AL.com he wrote two books while incarcerated, "The Tao...