Free Republic

Last week’s election continued America’s great history of expanding opportunity and equality. Today, we must take the next step on that journey by affording the opportunity to marry to all Americans — and we can continue that march by quickly enacting marriage equality here in Illinois. Throughout my career in public service, I have seen our city and society make progressive strides towards providing greater respect and rights to the GLBT community. As mayor, I lobbied for civil unions in Illinois. In Congress and within the Obama administration I pushed for the end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and helped...

Emanuel praises White House on Libya, says Obama ‘took control’By Alexandra Jaffe - 10/28/12 11:37 AM ET Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel defended President Obama's handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sunday. Emanuel, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said that Obama "took control and he said exactly what needs to be done" following the Sept. 11 attack, which claimed the lives of four Americans. Earlier on the program, Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) McCain charged that the Obama administration's handling of the situation amounted to either a...

So, my boyfriend Justin’s been avoiding a mysterious caller coming from the number (720) 582-8383 for the last week and this morning I told him to just take the call because it was most likely a political survey and I’d answer it for him. It was a research company in Denver, Colorado hired by Rahm Emanuel to poll Chicagoans about what they think of him. I had an awful lot of fun taking this survey and telling the pollster how bad a job Rahm is doing…and was interested in the amount of emphasis that was given to Rahm’s dealings with...

Next School Crisis for Chicago: Pension Fund Is Running DryBy MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Published: September 19, 2012 One of the most vexing problems for Chicago and its teachers went virtually unmentioned during the strike: The pension fund is about to hit a wall. The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has about $10 billion in assets, but is paying out more than $1 billion in benefits a year — much more than it has been taking in. That has forced it to sell investments, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to pay retired teachers. Experts say the fund could collapse...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he will seek a court order to end a teachers strike set to enter its second week. Emanuel said the strike is illegal under state law.

Chicago Teachers Vote to Continue Strike By STEPHANIE BANCHERO The Chicago public school teachers strike entered its second week after the teachers union declined Sunday to call off a week-long walkout that has catapulted the city into the national debate over teacher evaluations and job security. Only hours earlier, Chicago Teachers Union officials had trumpeted new concessions they said they had extracted from Mayor Rahm Emanuel during talks to settle the strike that started last Monday and has canceled classes for 350,000 students in the nation's third largest district. The vote to continue the strike came Sunday night by the...

As a union member from a union family whose grandfather was shot and wounded by company goons in a railroad strike, my sympathies are with the teachers in their walkout against the Chicago Public Schools. That doesn’t mean I agree with them on every point of conflict in their battle with school officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but I tend to at least see their point of view. In the first place, I fully support their decision to go on strike, although I sure wish they hadn’t. The mayor can stand up every day and say the strike was unnecessary...

Chicago Sun-Times reporter Natasha Korecki followed every step of Blagojevich’s downfall. She details his demise in a new book — Only in Chicago: How the Rod Blagojevich Scandal Engulfed Illinois; Embroiled Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and Jesse Jackson, Jr.; and Enthralled the Nation. The book raises the question of whether Jesse Jackson Jr., the congressman son of the famed civil rights leader, plotted to arrange a pardon for Blagojevich from President Barack Obama.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan spoke out against the Chicago Teachers Union strike on Monday, saying he stands behind Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's opposition to the demonstration. "Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong," Ryan said in Portland, Ore., according to a pool report transcript. "We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel." More than 26,000 education professionals in the Chicago area did not attend work on Monday over a contract negotiation dispute with the...

Rush Limbaugh: Chicago strike is Democratic ‘setup’ By: Kevin Robillard September 10, 2012 03:14 PM EDT Rush Limbaugh said Monday a strike by the 26,000-member Chicago Teachers’ Union was nothing but a ploy to help President Barack Obama’s reelection. “Let’s just see how long this thing goes on, and let’s see how it gets solved,” the conservative talk show host said on his radio show. “Anybody want to bet against me that Obama’s the one that gets credit for this, in a few short days? Anybody want to bet that there might be a little bit of violence and finally...

So far this month, the number of homicides has surpassed an average of one per day. Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy found some consolation in that statistic on Saturday. “The fact is, we’re doing better than we were doing before,” McCarthy said, after a press conference highlighting a citywide youth anti-violence campaign that recently ended. Through noon Saturday, there were 10 homicides for the month in Chicago — including two gun-related deaths shortly before McCarthy’s press conference, according to reports. There were 15 homicides through Sept. 8 last year, Chicago police statistics show.

The city of Chicago, the third largest in America, is crumbling into anarchy. The murder rate is so out of control that federal authorities have agreed to assist the Chicago Police Department in their efforts to curb soaring violence. The city has seen over a thirty-percent rise in its murder rate this year and in the last eight days of August, 82 people were killed or wounded by gun violence. With his city in a violent downward spiral, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been focusing on what’s important: banning Chik-fil-A from Chicago. On Wednesday, during Bill Clinton’s address to the DNC...

Is it safe to assume that approximately 50% of tonights DNC Convention viewers are primarily watching because they need a good laugh? Did anyone here catch the Rahm Emanuel speech? Was he competing with Marco Rubio? His voice was rather high and sounded like a 13 year old boy "Going Thru The Change".We can all agree that so far that between the Democrat Commentators VS Fox News hosts have been a train wreck, and the auditorium looks half full! What happened to the 35,000 people on the buses?

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be spending a lot less time at the Democratic National Convention than he’d originally planned. Originally, the mayor had planned to be in Charlotte from Tuesday through Friday morning. Now, his Communications Director Sarah Hamilton tells Newsradio that Emanuel has changed his plans. Hamilton insisted the mayor’s shortened trip to the convention doesn’t have anything to do with a possible teachers strike. She said Emanuel’s abbreviated trip likewise doesn’t have anything to do with the city’s higher murder rate this year.

<p>Catholic Charities is taking over as the agency giving people late night rides to shelters as part of Chicago's latest plan to fight homelessness.</p> <p>The city will use an expected $1.7 million in annual savings from turning over the overnight services to the venerable charity to help provide more beds and support to homeless youth and others, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday.</p>

Nineteen people were shot across the South and West sides from Thursday evening through early Friday morning -- 13 of them wounded over a 30-minute period, authorities say. The overnight shootings peaked between 9:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. That's when eight people, many of them teens, were shot at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m. Then two men were wounded in the Ida B. Wells / Darrow Homes complex at about 9:25 p.m., police said. The men, 27 and 33, were shot in the 600 block of East 37th Street and taken to the University of Chicago Hospitals,...

WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. ..... David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker. With energy an increasingly pivotal issue for the Obama White House, a review of Exelon’s relationship with the...

•It seems that recently Rahm came home and found a brown paper bag sitting on his front porch and demanded to know how it got there and what it was from his security detail. After all, there are police guarding his house front and rear 24/7. The police are not supposed to come on the front porch and the 1st watch detail knew nothing about it. Looking inside it was determined that it contained tomatoes and various vegetables. And the Case of the Killer Tomatoes was closed with no evil consequence. And so far as can be determined, just one...

Although I am a native Chicagoan who has lived in the city for many years apparently I am not a good citizen according to our mayor, Rahm Emanuel (D). By his description, I lack Chicago values. Guilty! I am so respectful of my fellow neighbors and other residents that I have never murdered any of them nor have I bribed any city, county or state employee, all standard behavior and practices in our city. I also believe in the US Constitution, including the sections guaranteeing the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech which, according to the mayor and...

Chicagoans hungry to flip the bird to Rahm, nicely Some of you asked just what the scene’s like on Chick-fil-A appreciation day in Chicago, home to #ChicagoValues, and the city at the heart of the controversy over Chick-fil-A after our mayor congratulated an alderman in shutting the company out of opening a second location within the city limits.The line at 12:10pm extended down the city block from the entrance, full of Chicagoans who, it would seem, don’t share Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s definition of “Chicago Values.”One woman and her friend took up a collection at their office to buy bags of...