Free Republic

When President Barack Obama launched his campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat in late 2002, his wife Michelle enlisted the help of a longtime friend, Kevin Thompson. Michelle had gotten to know Thompson back in the early 1990s, when she was still Michelle Robinson and the pair worked in the policy shop of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Over the years, the two had stayed close, working together again at the University of Chicago Hospitals and swapping home improvement ideas over meals. Obama, who was then a state senator, would be facing off in the Democratic primary against businessman Blair...

In the United States, armed citizens are seldom robbed.   When they are, it is usually because the robber does not know that they are armed, and simply makes a mistake in victim selection.   That may be what happened with a Illinois police officer.  It happened on 7 September, 2014.   From wgntv.com: An off-duty Harvey Police Officer is in critical condition after being attacked and robbed. It happened around 3:00am this morning near 59th and Lake Shore Drive, at the nearby harbor. The officer was reportedly hit in the head with a gun, before his gun and badge were...

Taxpayers on hook for millions in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching . Thanks to a loophole created by the Illinois legislature, retired teacher union leaders are getting pension credit for the years they did union work after leaving the classroom. The arrangement has put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching, and further drained an already overburdened state pension fund. ... The union bosses collecting the payouts had jobs at the National Education Association (NEA), the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) after their teaching careers. Most got...

The battle for the House has turned into trench warfare, with Republicans trying to scrape out enough wins to give them a historic majority and Democrats doing everything they can to minimize GOP gains. If the election were held today, strategists from both sides say, Republicans would expand their current majority by between six and eight seats ... Republicans head into the final weeks of the campaign almost exclusively on offense. Of the 31 or so races seriously in contention, 22 — over 70 percent — are in districts held by Democrats. Twenty of the 31 districts were won by...

[Note that the author is a bigot, but intelligent and articulate. My response below.] Why Not Just Identify Yourself and Avoid Possible Death? Lisa Mahone and her boyfriend Jamal Jones were driving on Sept. 24 in Hammond, Indiana, with Mahone’s two kids in the back seat when Mahone was stopped and ticketed for driving without wearing a seat belt. The stop was caught on cellphone camera by Mahone’s 14-year-old son. “Thank goodness Joseph took the video, because the video stands for itself that these officers engaged in excessive force,” attorney Dana Kurtz said in a news conference with the couple...

just listening on my scanner (police zone 7)

Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, of Bolingbrook was arrested by the FBI at O'Hare International Airport after allegedly supporting overseas terrorism. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, he was attempting to join ISIS. Khan was arrested by the Chicago FBI's Joint Terrorism task force without incident on Saturday night. He was charged in criminal court Monday morning with one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing Thursday morning. According to the complaint affidavit, law enforcement agents observed Khan pass through security at O'Hare on Saturday afternoon. The...

If you're an Illinoisan who isn't on a political payroll — meaning you won't have a fat six-figure pension like many of our public officials — you'll likely spend this last month before the Illinois governor's election in deep contemplation. Democratic incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn and businessman Bruce Rauner, the Republican, are in a daily knife fight, but if you're wise, you might also spend this time asking yourself these eternal questions: •Since I don't have a government pension, what kind of sauce will I put on my dry dog food to make it tasty when I'm old? •Would bottled...

CHICAGO — Just over a month until Election Day, President Obama is returning to a theme he hoped to make a centerpiece of the midterm campaign: the economy. Multiple crises overseas, the resignation of the Secret Service’s director after eye-popping threats to presidential safety, and the first case of Ebola in the United States have all kept Mr. Obama in a reactive mode. But in a speech Thursday at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., the president will go on the offensive and highlight the strides the economy has made since the near-economic collapse he inherited in 2009. He will also...

With more than $2 million in production costs on the line, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's first-ever Great Chicago Fire Festival may get a chilly reception — at least from Mother Nature, always a force to be reckoned with in this city. Indeed, what could wind up being record cold for an early October evening threatens to put a damper (rain is in the forecast too) on what was designed to be a major fall spectacle to attract local residents and tourists. The latest forecast shows daytime temps on Saturday will be lucky to top out at 50 degrees. By the...

In a stunning bi-partisan “Congressional Letter” from over 353 out of 435 U.S. congresspersons to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the 353 U.S. representatives issued a stark warning that, “As you wrote in the Washington Post earlier this summer, if Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful, “it’s not a hard proposition to prove. The only reasonable conclusion for its stonewalling of international investigators is that Tehran does indeed have much to hide.” The Congressional Letter’s signatories included almost all of both parties’ leaderships, and was greatly aided by Republican Congressman Peter J. Roskam (R-IL-06) of Illinois, a stalwart, and...

An independent audit of nearly 16,000 red-light camera tickets determined that a majority of them were correctly issued. Ninety-six percent of the tickets were deemed to be properly issued, to be precise. . . . CDOT spokesman Peter Scales told the Sun-Times the validation rate was in line with the city’s expectations.

I attended the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Illinois last weekend.   After the event, I met another attendee in Wisconsin.   Don Hosmer recalled disarming before entering Illinois, and seeing several others do so as well.   As a result, I decided to explore the problems and possibilities of carry in Illinois for a non-resident. You could apply for, and obtain an Illinois concealed carry permit.  They are backed up at present, but it looks like it would be possible, if somewhat difficult.  From the Illinois State Police site:  Sec. 40. Non-resident license applications. (a) For the purposes of this Section,...

In the race for governor, it’s not just Republican versus Democrat — there’s a new voice trying to elbow in. WGN’s Courtney Gousman talks to the Libertarian candidate fighting for your vote in November, Chad Grimm.

An armed employee who was trying to shut down water filtration equipment at a northwest suburban water reclamation plant has been taken into custody. 911 callers reported an armed man, possibly with a hostage, trying to shut down equipment just before noon at the Fox River Water Reclamation District at 875 Dana Dr. in Elgin, according to Elgin police. Officers found the man, armed with a handgun, near the building and attempted to negotiate with him, police said. The man refused to surrender and officers used a rubber bullet, similar to a bean bag round, to incapacitate him. The man...

Don Hosmer Last year, on the way the Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), I had an unexpected encounter at a diner in central Texas.   I rode my motorcycle to that GRPC.   This year I took my truck to the GRPC in Chicago.   I have friends and family in Wisconsin that I wanted to visit, and some items that would have been less comfortable to carry on a motorcycle.    This year the encounter happened after the conference. I was traveling up I-90/94 when I decided to stop for dinner on the northern edge of the Wisconsin Dells.  Last  year I...

A series of fireballs lit up the night sky across the eastern U.S. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning just hours apart. ... More than 420 witnesses reported seeing the fireball streaking across the sky, with those reports from Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. Among the reports AMS received in Indiana, one person in Greenwood described the fireball as having "small reddish sparks as it snuffed out, scattered in all directions." ... Three of the four reported fireballs happened within 90 minutes of each other, with the other reports over New Jersey, Tennessee and Florida. "It is rare that multiple...

Brian Howard, 36, of Naperville has been charged with one felony count of Destruction of Aircraft or Aircraft Facilities after he allegedly set a fire in the basement of an Aurora FAA facility, cut the feeds to the radar and damaged the communications system, forcing a ground stop at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway international airports, the FBI says. Investigators say Howard managed to do extensive damage to the host computer, as well as the lines to radar in the facility. The Air Route Control Center monitors high altitude aircraft before landing in Chicago or flying through the area.

...and the Pastor Nervously Sweating What one church recently did with $160,000 during a Sunday morning service absolutely stunned parishioners: 320 members were each given a $500 check to spend as they wish. ... Traux, who aid that the money came from a decades-old real estate deal, first told her congregation that active members would be receiving the sizable checks. ... The move came after Traux and church elders decided to give back $10 percent of the $1.6 million LaSalle Street Church reportedly made from the real estate deal - a sum that adds up to the $160,000 figure members...

What follows is the most powerful recorded police checkpoint scene I have witnessed since posting: Extremely Powerful Video – Happy 4th of July from a Police State Checkpoint, last summer. While the former incident happened in Tennessee, the following occurred in Illinois. The American pleb who was accosted by Illinois State Police was DeKalb resident Ryan Scott. While it starts off slow, make sure you watch it all the way to the end. While one of the the police officers is reasonable, the other one can’t stop yelling and seems to derive a particular pleasure from repeatedly informing the citizen...