Free Republic

Many times we have focused on liberal hypocrites or establishment politicians as our Jerk of the Week recipients. However, there is one category of scum that truly deserves our scorn and disgust. I'm speaking of those who use the power of government to harass their political foes and attempt to stifle their God-given rights as enumerated in our Constitution. That's why our Jerk of the Week is John Chisholm, the Milwaukee County District Attorney. A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed early this week against the special prosecutor, the presiding judge, and top prosecutors in the Milwaukee County District Attorney's...

According to police, a 21-year-old male sustained life-threatening injuries and is being treated at a local hospital. Preliminary investigation reveals that the injured person was likely involved in criminal activity when he was shot by his intended victim.

As those in power continues to hang onto the 19th century model of education or accept Common Core indoctrination for their students, parents are moving toward becoming the “deciders” as they chose charter and private schools, homeschooling, and online programs, it is leaving thousands of empty school buildings all across America. According to a recent study among the cities with vacant school buildings are

A rare Stradivarius violin on loan to Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was stolen during an armed robbery Monday night. The instrument, known in musical circles as the Lipinski violin, was taken around 10:20 p.m. Monday in a parking lot in the rear of Wisconsin Lutheran College on W. Wisconsin Ave., police said. Almond had played a concert at Wisconsin Lutheran Monday evening as part of his Frankly Music series. In a 2008 feature on the violin, Chicago violin dealer Stefan Hersh said the Lipinski violin was comparable in value to another Strad that sold for more than $3.5...

Chicago violin dealer Stefan Hersh, a close friend of Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond, said he was stunned when Almond called to tell him that robbers Monday evening took the priceless Stradivarius violin he plays. "I've never heard of an armed robbery for a violin," said Hersh, founder of Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins, which buys and sells rare instruments. Hersh, also a violinist himself, examined the Lipinski Stradivarius with Almond when the instrument's anonymous owner offered to loan it to Almond. Almond has played the instrument in concert since 2008. Hersh said his initial presumption was that the...

Pres. Obama headed to Milwaukee after State of Union address January 26, 2014, by Mike Lowe, Pres. Obama headed to Milwaukee after State of Union address MILWAUKEE (WITI) — President Barack Obama is set to deliver his State of the Union address this week. According to the White House, the speech will be optimistic and focus on the middle class. After the speech, President Obama will take his message on the road to four places — one of which is Milwaukee. This is not the first time President Obama has used his big speech to put the spotlight on Wisconsin....

The end of 2013 brought a measure of closure to a long-running Milwaukee police scandal, though some say the officer — and his cohorts — who repeatedly and illegally shoved his fingers up black male suspects’ anal cavities got off with a light sentence considering the flagrant nature of his abuses. The ringleader was identified as officer Michael Vagnini, a white man who routinely targeted black males as young as fifteen for sadistic — and blatantly illegal — anal searches. One victim said that another officer put a gun to his head while Vagnini administered a choke hold, touched his...

Guns turned in to Phoenix PD earlier this year A recent story revealed that the Milwaukee is storing 11,000 confiscated guns in a facility in the city.  Police Chief Ed Flynn engaged in a bit of hyperbole when he claimed that every gun was connected to a body.   Milwaukee has had 1,515  murders from 1999 to present, over the last 14 years.  As guns are used in about two thirds of murders, Chief Flynn would have to be hoarding all guns connected to murder in the entire State since Wisconsin entered the Union in 1848 for each one to be...

MILWAUKEE – Catholic school parents in Milwaukee have a lot of questions about how Common Core will impact their children’s education, but they won’t be able to use church property for an informational meeting that’s scheduled for this coming Sunday. The Archbishop’s office nixed the idea after officials learned the featured speaker, Dr. James “Duke” Pesta, “holds an opinion of Common Core State Standards that is contrary to that of the Archdiocese,” reports CUFMilwaukke.org. The Sunday afternoon talk is now being held at the Clarion Hotel Grand Ballroom. Pesta is one of the nation’s leading critics of the nationalized learning...

COMMON CORE: DANGERS AND THREATS TO CATHOLIC IDENTITY by DR. DUKE PESTA—SUNDAY, NOV. 17——An Update— We have just learned that, upon the recommendation of Dr. Kathleen Cepelka, Superintendent of Catholic Schools, to the Director of Administrative Services at St. John the Evangelist Parish (Denise Kasulka) we have been denied the use of the church hall for our meeting Sunday, November 17. Ms. Kasulka informed the Pastor, Fr. Michael Merkt,who is out of town at a retreat, of Dr. Cepelka’s decision. According to Ms. Kasulka, Fr. Merkt agreed that we cannot use the church hall. In a phone conversation with Dr....

A group of Milwaukee pastors and their supporters gathered Monday morning at a local coffee shop to implore city officials to sponsor a gun buyback program, which they say could remove weapons from the city's streets and reduce violence in their neighborhoods. "We are here today because we are fed up," said the Rev. John McVicker Sr., pastor at Christ the King Baptist Church. "There have been far too many senseless shootings in our city, many resulting in homicide." The pastors have asked the city to allot $50,000 in its 2014 budget to initiate a one-time, anonymous gun buyback, where...

Arise, Children's Community Health Plan, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, Molina, United, Unity, WEA Insurance Corp The above health insurance plans include Planned Parenthood as an in-network provider.

Milwaukee County would end health insurance coverage for some or all of its 4,400 employees and instead provide a subsidy toward individual coverage purchased through the new federal exchanges, under an idea floated in County Executive Chris Abele's 2014 budget.

MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee Police are investigating a vicious dog attack report. It happened Monday night near 76th and Grantosa. Animal Control officers on the scene tell CBS 58's Bill Walsh that the dog will be put down. (snip) Apparently a neighbor got a gun and hit the dog in the leg. The owner says she told the neighbor to shoot.

In between bowls of chicken poodle soup and deciding to provide air cover for al-Qaeda in Syria, our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama, found time to meet with mayors from our crumbling major cities. From Justin Sink of The Hill: *** "President Obama told a collection of big-city mayors Tuesday at the White House that he would continue to use executive actions to combat gun violence plaguing major cities. In the meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder and the mayors of 18 cities from across the nation, Obama discussed commonly applicable strategies to reduce youth violence. 'He also vowed to...

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. told a gathering of about 100 people on Sunday that citizens who use their firearms in self-defense should have their guns returned to them within 48 hours of being cleared of criminal charges. Clarke was a guest speaker at a free concealed-carry class held at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall, located on the city’s south side, an establishment that made headlines last week after the owner of the tavern, Andy Kochanski, fatally shot a would-be robber. While prosecutors have cleared Kochanski of criminal charges and agree that he acted lawfully in defense of himself...

MADISON — An Appleton Area School District committee charged with reviewing and recommending a reading list for the public school system’s ninth-graders proved anything but an open book, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. In a lawsuit against the school district, Milwaukee-based WILL, a libertarian-leaning public interest firm, asserts the Communication Arts I Materials Review Committee met in secret before handing down its fiction recommendations to a subcommittee of the Appleton School Board. “They didn’t follow the open meetings law” said Tom Kamenick, associate counsel and open government specialist at WILL. “These meetings were completely closed off...

It is either the case that African Americans, young people, old people, and poor people labor under some onerous yet curiously undetectable burden that keeps them from obtaining free, government-issued photo IDs, or it is the case that Hillary Clinton, the NAACP, et al. are full of bunk when they claim that voter-ID laws such as the one just adopted in North Carolina amount to “disenfranchisement.” The evidence strongly suggests the presence of ambient bunk levels approaching toxicity. In general, Americans are very handy when it comes to acquiring free things issued by the government, and none of the groups...

In a statement expressing his frustration with how growth in the local economy bypasses black males in the city, Ald. Joe Davis said Friday that the illegal drug trade is the "common way" for many African-Americans to provide for their basic financial needs. Davis, who is African-American, entitled his statement: "Divide and conquer politics stagnates Milwaukee's economy, shuts out black males." {snip} Davis said the city's rate of economic growth involving the private sector was "pathetic." He added that that poor performance was directly related to the city's crime rate. "We accept group homes, day cares, gas stations and corner...

Wisconsin's public employees are leaving their unions in droves, which should be no surprise: With passage of Act 10 in 2011, public unions in the Badger State lost many of their reasons for being. The "budget-repair bill" pushed through the Legislature by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker limited bargaining to wages only, and then only up to the cost of living; it also required unions to recertify each year and barred the automatic collection of union dues. Relying on federal financial records, the Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice found union membership has declined by 50% or more...