Free Republic

As President Barack Obama gets set to travel to Copenhagen Thursday night to make the case that Chicago should host the 2016 Olympics, good government groups are torn over how to handle the presidential sales pitch. After all, the moneyed interests behind Chicago’s bid — who bundled nearly $2 million for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — are hard to ignore and they raise the specter of influence-peddling that reformists are dedicated to fighting. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/chicago-olympic-committee_n_306135.html

“We’re cutting off money for schools, cutting off money for police, allowing people to be forced to live in food deserts, closing hospitals, closing access to mental health facilities,” Kennedy told reporters during a news conference that began as a criticism of the city’s efforts to stop gun violence. What choice do people have but to move, to leave, and I think that’s part of a strategic gentrification plan being implemented by the city of Chicago to push people of color out of the city,” he continued. Asked who is behind this alleged plan, Kennedy pointed to Emanuel. “I believe...

Rahm Emanuel appeared Tuesday on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and wowed the host and audience with his rabid anti-Trump rhetoric. Perhaps jealous of his famous Hollywood power-agent brother, Ari Emanuel, Rahm giddily joined the cacophony of late-night TV anti-Trump snark and, unknowingly, provided Chicagoans a Nero-like vision of a failed leader playing his fiddle as his city smolders, beset by rampant violence, failing schools, and a fleeing population. Chicago’s besieged residents don’t have the luxury of jetting off to New York for TV appearances... they live in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the developed world. Part of the...

Instead of asking the U.S. President Donald Trump for assistance with Chicago’s never-ending gun violence, Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin, a Democrat, has reportedly expressed interest in teaming up with the United Nations. “I’m hoping to appeal to the U.N. to actually come to Chicago and meet with victims of violence, and maybe even possibly help out in terms of peacekeeping efforts, because I think it’s so critical for us to make sure that these neighborhoods are safe,” he said Thursday, according to local station WBBM. He reportedly made the comments from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport en route to New...

Six people are dead and at least 14 more have been wounded in shootings across Chicago this weekend, according to police. The weekend's first fatality occurred at around 3:40 p.m. Saturday afternoon in the 5600 block of South Emerald Avenue in the city's Englewood neighborhood, authorities said. A 20-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man were sitting in a car when a person in a dark-colored Audi opened fire, striking both victims, according to police. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police, and the man was taken to St. Bernard Hospital in stable condition with a gunshot...

With gun violence garnering unflattering national attention for Chicago, carjackings have quietly gone off the charts as well. While shootings and homicides are largely concentrated in impoverished pockets of the South and West sides, carjackings are occurring throughout the city, including the downtown area, Chicago police statistics show. Last year Chicago recorded 663 carjackings, nearly double the 339 in 2015 and the most since 2009, according to the department. And the numbers have shot up even further so far this year. Through Oct. 18, the latest date available, carjackings have totaled 661, nearly equal to all of 2016 and a...

Among the 23 shot in Chicago over the weekend: a 64-year-old teacher, a young mother and a 15-year-old boy. The nearly two dozen shootings from Friday afternoon to Monday morning included nine people who were killed, two of whom were teenagers. An unintended target of a drive-by in Rogers Park, Cynthia Trevillion was killed by a stray bullet Friday night while she waited for a train at the CTA Morse stop. She was a teacher at the Chicago Waldorf School in Rogers Park. Simone D. McKay, a 26-year-old mother of two, was fatally shot in front of her Rosemoor home...

There were 59 murders in Chicago in September, the city where black lives don’t seem to matter to liberals and gun control zealots. The horrible death toll in the Las Vegas massacre is just a normal month in the gun control and murder capital of America. The Democratic caucus in Congress that seizes on Las Vegas as another crisis too terrible to waste in their pursuit of gun control says nothing about the Chicago carnage, for which nary an NFL millionaire takes a knee while whining about social justice: The murder toll in Las Vegas on Sunday makes it the...

At first glance, nothing differentiates Vernetta Robinzine from passers-by in the Beverly neighborhood on Chicago's Far South Side. On a recent evening, like most people on a workday, she donned business casual attire with a loose, bright blouse. But her daily wardrobe includes something unseen that gives her confidence. Robinzine, 51, is a gun owner with a concealed carry license. Since she received her permit in late spring, she carries her firearm wherever she goes. ADVERTISING "It's like a part of me now," Robinzine said with the smile. Data show Robinzine is part of a burgeoning group in Cook County:...

The Associated Press shirked their own style guide in a recently published article, using “undocumented citizens” in lieu of their usual “undocumented immigrants.” The article with the strange reference was published on September 5 and discusses Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s response to President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “The Chicago Sun-Times reports that school officials say about a third of the school’s students are undocumented citizens,” the AP wrote.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Eddie Johnson on Tuesday bemoaned the fights that forced the United Center to close, canceling the championship game of a basketball league intended to keep teenagers off the streets in the summer. The pandemonium — some captured on cellphone video — prevented neighborhood teams made up of players from two of Chicago’s top high school basketball teams — Orr Academy and Curie Metropolitan — from squaring off in a title game. As upsetting to Emanuel and Johnson as the ugly scene outside the United Center was the fact that the league itself was supposed...

CHICAGO (CBS) — A man who shot and killed three people in his East Side Home on Sunday has been released from custody, but police said their investigation continues. Police said the 31-year-old man told officers he shot three people who had broken into his home near 102nd and Ewing around 5:30 p.m. Sunday, but police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi later said “further investigation revealed some inconsistencies in his initial story.” Police sources said a witness told detectives the three people shot inside the house had been there all day, leading investigators to question his account of the shooting. Wednesday morning,...

(snip)Victor Davila died here in an alley between Whipple Street and Sacramento Avenue.(snip)Davila and many of the men mourning his death were Latin Kings, police said.(snip) The young man killed here was a close family friend of Pat Razo, a 42-year-old woman whose sons and a nephew were Latin Kings. It’s a struggle to raise boys in the neighborhood, she said. She moved to Carpentersville for 10 years to give them a better chance, but her stepson Aaron -- the oldest of her children -- was shot to death in the western suburb in 2007. He was 17.(snip)Then in April...

CHICAGO (CBS) — Nine people were killed and at least 30 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago between Friday night and Monday morning.(snip) Three people were killed in a Sunday evening shooting in the East Side neighborhood on the Far South Side. A 17-year-old boy, 22-year-old man and 24-year-old woman all suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the body at 5:32 p.m. in the 10200 block of South Ewing and were pronounced dead at the scene,(snip) About 11:20 a.m. Sunday, Emmanuel Fleming, 34, and 46-year-old Michael Swift were killed in a shooting in the West Side Austin neighborhood. The men...

Matt McGrath, a spokesman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, confirmed the city will take responsibility for the $279 million itself, even though it has its own gap of nearly $200 million, including the cost of hiring new police. "I'm sure we will" come up with those funds, he said. But "no details" are available today.

Rahm Emanuel has emphatically denied that politics is behind his decision to file a pre-emptive lawsuit seeking to block U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions from cutting off federal crimefighting funds to sanctuary cities. If that’s true, why did Emanuel play the media like a fiddle by dribbling out details of the lawsuit over a three-day period? And why do the mayor’s own private emails expose his attempts to use his pro-immigration stance to shore up a national media image that took a beating after the November 2015 release of video showing a white Chicago Police officer firing 16 shots at...

The attorney general called the “open hostility” against protecting law enforcement -- while protecting criminal aliens -- “astounding” given the influx of Chicago’s violence crime. “The city’s leaders cannot follow some laws and ignore others and reasonably expect this horrific situation to improve,” Sessions continued. The grants, named for former New York City police officer Edward Byrne, who was murdered in 1988, would provide $3.2 million to Chicago, to be used for police vehicles. Funding from the grant is a small fraction of the city's budget. A requirement added to the grants would force local jurisdictions to report to federal...

The city of Chicago says it plans to file a lawsuit against the US Justice Department on Monday over new stipulations placed on federal law enforcement grant money requiring local police departments to assist in federal immigration actions. Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office said in a statement that the Trump administration's "latest unlawful misguided action undermines public safety and violates" the Constitution. He said the city is challenging the administration "to ensure that their misguided policies do not threaten the safety of our residents." [Snip] "Chicago will not be blackmailed into changing our values, and we are and will remain a...

(CHICAGO) Mayor Emanuel says he’s going to sue the Trump Justice Dept on Monday over its new Sanctuary City rules. New rules just out prevent Sanctuary Cities like Chicago to get certain law enforcement grants and so the mayor says Chicago will file suit to kill the rules and get the millions in question. In an interview with WLS-AM for Sunday’s edition of “Bill Cameron and Connected to Chicago”, the mayor said “We are not going to be put in a position of choosing who we are as a welcoming city and strengthening our police dept. These are exactly the...

A 4-year-old boy and an 89-year-old man were among 35 people shot across the city from Friday evening to Monday morning, a period that also saw four homicides. The most recent deaths were the latest of 377 people fatally shot in the city this year, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times. In all, more than 2,150 people have been shot since the start of the year. About 5:15 p.m. Friday, the 4-year-old was in the Austin neighborhood’s 5200 block of West Kamerling with 28-year-old Nikia Betts and a 19-year-old man when gunfire erupted,(snip) Betts, who lived in the...