Free Republic

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel earlier this month insisted that his brand of gun control should spread nationwide, but this past weekend’s Windy City body count – with six dead and more than 20 wounded, according to this morning’s Chicago Sun Times – does not instill public faith in his strategy. Earlier this month when Mark Glaze stepped down as executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “when a mass shooting happens…nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting (in Santa Barbara).” Late last month, Washington CeaseFire President Ralph...

<p>A gunman fired into a crowd at a South Shore strip mall Monday night, striking two teenagers and four adults, according to police....</p> <p>For Tamesha Ginn, a lifelong South Shore resident who heard the gunfire from her porch, the shooting reflected changes her neighborhood has gone through in the years since her childhood.</p>

Five people were killed and at least 15 others have been wounded in separate shootings across the city since Friday evening, including eight shot within the first 30 minutes of June. The most recent fatal shooting happened early Sunday in the Austin neighborhood, when a teenage boy was killed and five others were wounded. The six were standing in a group at the intersection of West Ferdinand Street and North Lavergne Avenue about 12:30 a.m. when several shooters emerged from a nearby alley and opened fire, police said.

I know this isn’t really much of a shock: but Nancy Pelosi is, once again, uttering nonsense. This time, her aimless string of platitudes was focused (and I use the word “focused” rather loosely) on immigration reform. Like many of her progressive allies (in both parties) she rambled about the need for America to create a “path to citizenship”. Nancy, we already have a path to citizenship… And generally, the first step to becoming a US citizen isn’t breaking our Federal immigration laws. According to CNS News: “As a country, we cannot, let me say, we cannot prohibit a path...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is facing criticism after reports emerged this week that his motorcade was caught speeding and violating other traffic laws at least 20 times since 2012. City vehicles carrying Emanuel were spotted speeding near schools and parks and running red stoplights just shy of two dozen times since 2012, WLS-TV reported this week. The station tracked Chicago’s red light and speed cameras and discovered that the city vehicles known to chauffer Emanuel around regularly break critical traffic safety laws. Infractions included a February incident in which speed camears caught both of Emanuel’s vehicles going more than 10...

May 5, 2014 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Red lights? Speed limits? They're apparently not a problem if you are driving the mayor of the city of Chicago. Despite Rahm Emanuel's contention that red light and speed cameras are "all about safety," the ABC7 Eyewitness News I-Team learned those same cameras regularly catch the mayor's motorcade running red and speeding. The city's website catalogs all red light and speed camera violations regardless of who you are. The I-Team ran the plates of the two city vehicles in which Emanuel is chauffeured around Chicago. Since 2012, the cameras have caught the mayor's motorcade...

Shootings on the city's South and West sides left two people dead and at least five others wounded late Tuesday and early this morning. About 9:50 p.m., two men were shot in the 7900 block of South Vincennes Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood. Two assailants approached on foot and started shooting, police said. A witness told relatives the two had been inside the restaurant when the two walked in.

In a previously unpublicized transcript from 2004, the Illinois State Senate specifically linked then US Senator-Elect Barack Obama with corrupt politician and Rod Blagojevich ally Emil Jones Jr. More than simply connecting the two, the transcript specifically calls Jones Mr. Obama's "mentor" and his "political godfather." The transcript was written on November 8, 2004, soon after Mr. Obama was elected to the United States Senate. Ironically, the subject of the section in which the soon-to-be Senator was linked to Jones was written in praise of Mr. Obama. The quote comes from Senate Resolution 716, which was in place to congratulate...

Notes and memos just released by former President Bill Clinton's library reveal that the administration's political team schemed to use the immigration issue to defeat Republicans. Just months into the new administration, memos were swapped inside White House offices discussing how to use immigration to knock out Republicans in California, Texas, New York and other states. In one memo to former Clinton deputy Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, a top aide wrote, “Immigration will be one of the top two or three issues in the California governor's race in 1994, and I suspect the issue will be significant in...

President Obama on Monday said he has selected W. Neil Eggleston to become chief counsel, adding the expertise of a veteran attorney who was involved in some of the most heated legal battles of the Clinton administration. Eggleston, a white-collar defender who is now at Kirkland & Ellis, will replace departing White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler in mid-May. "Neil brings extraordinary expertise, credentials, and experience, to our team," Obama said in a statement. "He has a passion for public service, is renowned for his conscientiousness and foresight, and I look forward to working closely with him in the coming years."...

Chicago public schools are set to introduce a new Afro-centric curriculum, according to a closely-guarded copy obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The curriculum covers kindergarten through tenth grade and is designed to align with Common Core. It includes a web link to TheAfrican.com, a website whose publisher decries “fake-Jews” and calls the United States a “Zionist-occupied enemy territory.”

Good news. Crime is down in Chicago. Walk the streets late at night. Carry your wallet in your back pocket. It’s safe. Homicides dropped 18 percent in Chicago last year and crime overall was down 16 percent, according to statistics released by the police department this morning.Shootings across the city dropped by 24 percent from 2012 and 16 percent from 2011, according to the department’s numbers. Sexual assaults were down 6 percent from last year, robberies down 12 percent, serious battery down 16 percent, burglaries down 22 percent, motor vehicle thefts down 23 percent, thefts down 3 percent. How was...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The recent Conservative Political Action Conference provides a forum for big names. But it’s also a platform for the murmurs and asides from political strategists who’ve been everywhere and done everything, and like to speculate. Such is the case when the potential presidential candidacy ofHillary Clinton was parsed by a pair of insiders. Would she run? Maybe, if her health and vigor remain strong. But is she holding a place for someone else? Could be. The take-away suggestion: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seriously being groomed as a White House contender. “Maybe in the lead role, maybe the running mate....

Has the mayor of Chicago reinvented the city’s notorious political machine – and does he covet the White House? When Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago in 2011, he proclaimed: “I will not be a patient mayor.” It was an understatement. The former chief of staff to Barack Obama returned home with a near-legendary reputation for his take-no-prisoners style of operating. That is how he acquired the nickname “Rahmbo”. He once famously mailed a dead fish to a pollster with whom he had fallen out. There are few significant Washington figures who have not felt the lash of his tongue....

The city’s annual prayer breakfast to honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday at times turned into an election-year pep rally for Illinois Democrats to push the idea of a minimum wage hike. **SNIP** Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn weren’t listed on the program, but both took the stage after guests dined on eggs and sliced melon. Both politicians who are seeking new terms this year tied their support for an increase of the minimum wage at the federal and state levels to King’s legacy of fighting for justice. Quinn said leaders today...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced the members of a grocery store task force that will work to find new owners for stores left vacant after Safeway closes all Dominick's stores in the Chicago-area Dec. 28. The task force will work with building representatives, gather local market data, find and approach likely prospects in the food industry as well as host tours, create marketing materials and engage brokers. It will also work to ensure the availability of fresh food and produce and support workers who are affected by the store closings.

In a recent long-form article on the troubles that the banking and investment sectors have had with the destructive policies coming out of the White House, unnamed Democrats told Politico that Rahm Emanuel and, most especially, Valerie Jarrett were not only entirely unresponsive to their concerns, but they actually lacked any knowledge about the industries for which they were tasked with crafting policy--and earned no "respect" because of it. Things got so bad that representatives of the financial sectors just stopped having meetings with the White House because any such meetings were pointless. The December 11 article, "Lament of the...

There is an ongoing congressional investigation of improprieties and possible fraud at the US Census, as the New York Post reports a rumor that in 2009, gearing up for the 2010 national headcount, the Obama administration wanted to put the Census under the auspices of senior White House aide Rahm Emanuel.Normally, the Census is administrated by the Chief of the Commerce department. Obama reportedly decided that Emanuel would be a superior overseer. The fact that a strident Democratic strategist such as Emanuel could have been at the helm of the Census, the main purpose of which is congressional redistricting, must have put Republicans...

Calling city 'unlivable,' Mancow sells Lincoln Park condo 'I think they've done a good job of making the city unlivable for families' By Bob Goldsborough Special to the Tribune 8:31 a.m. CST, November 18, 2013 Calling his decision to leave the city “heartbreaking,” radio host and reality TV star Erich “Mancow” Muller has sold his Lincoln Park condominium and decamped to a house in Wilmette. Muller, who is a married father of twin school-aged daughters, told Elite Street he’d had enough with city living. “The schools are awful. I guess I could have had (my daughters) go to public schools,...

Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel, a former adviser to the Obama White House, admitted today that, if Democrats have their way, the individual insurance market is going away. “Insurance companies don’t want, insurance companies don’t want the individual market as it’s constructed. They see the future. That individual market is going away. They don’t want to invest in it.” That was their plan all along. Via FOX News Sunday: