Free Republic

Only one in five Chicago voters credit Mayor Rahm Emanuel with doing a better job of running the city than Richard M. Daley did, and only 29 percent would support him if the mayoral election were held today. Those are the results of a new poll conducted for Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times’ political portal. The telephone survey of 511 registered Chicago voters who said they were “very likely” to go to the polls on Feb. 24 was conducted Wednesday by the firm of McKeon & Associates. “Right now, Rahm is not connecting. If he doesn’t do that, he’s...

In 2009, in the earliest weeks of President Barack Obama‘s administration, the White House made the controversial decision to take the unprecedented step of moving the Census Bureau from control of the commerce secretary over to the White House ahead of the decennial 2010 census. Conservatives sounded alarm bells. “It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) of then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “Requiring the Census director to report directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a...

It turns out that American citizens “are not allowed” to criticize Israel. Or so says Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama. Emanuel was asked his view of the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace in an interview appearing in the April 21 issue of The New Republic. He ventured to say that while Israel “has a security concern involving geography, geography does not have the same value it did in 1967.” Emanuel’s strategic notions are highly debatable. Without the territories captured 47 years ago, during the Six-Day War, Israel would be nine miles...

Forty-four people were shot over the last three days in a bloody epidemic sweeping Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago. Yet CBS has, thus far, ignored the crime wave. In contrast, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS This Morning on Tuesday both briefly covered the violence in the city run by Barack Obama’s former chief of staff. […] Even though CBS allowed no time for tragic news out of Chicago, the network’s morning show devoted four minutes to a possible maple syrup shortage. …

Le’t work through a few things. Shortly after he became president, Barack Obama killed Washington, DC’s school voucher program. His own Department of Education had concluded that students who received the vouchers benefited from it and improved, but that did not matter a bit. He callously turned a deaf ear to pleas from parents and students who found the vouchers to be an escape from the city’s terrible schools. He sided with the teachers’ unions against those families and their children, even while claiming to be a champion of the oppressed and under-represented. Obama also sided with the unions on...

The Chicago Tribune has uncovered more than 700 emails between CNN producers and the Office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel – emails that reveal the coordination of the TV series’ story lines, press release approval, and even camera angles relating to the low-rated series, ‘Chicagoland.’ Back in March, I penned a column about the program’s overt attempt to recast Emanuel as a courageous, 21st century mayor. In fact, ‘Chicagoland’ executive producer Robert Redford even compared Emanuel’s job to “being like President of the United States.” Perhaps Emanuel’s PR team wrote that quote for Redford too. I also questioned the millions of advertising dollars CNN was spending to slap up...

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...

Amidst ongoing corruption trials, a scandal involving top cops who've been changing crime statistics to show crime going down when it’s not, and an economy reeling from the twin salvos of runaway tax increases, and a public pension mess, Chicago has come up with a solution to their economic woes and maybe to their crime fighting woes as well. The city is going to fund giant street performing puppets, some as high as 50 feet tall, for merely millions of dollars. Yes, apparently the performing puppets that they have at City Hall, at police headquarters and crawling all over...

Since the beginning of 2014 Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy have been touting a declining crime rate in the Windy City, but according to a new report by Chicago Magazine, they may be cooking the books. "City leaders manipulated crime statistics to create the appearance of a rapidly decreasing rate of crime."

Other than hitting the perfect tee shot, nothing is more gratifying than the sight of liberals hoisted on a petard fashioned by their own corruption. In May of 2011, anti-gun lunatic Garry McCarthy was named Chicago Police Superintendent by mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Though making all of the usual promises about reducing the city’s crime rate, during his first full year–2012–Chicago recorded 507 murders, the most since 2008 and more than in any year since 2003. Of course, more important than 507 dead was the fact that Emanuel’s approval rate seemed to decline another notch...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, told CNBC on Thursday he gave President Barack Obama a "contrary opinion" on the early stages of the Affordable Care Act, which debuted with a glitch-ridden website and troubled exchanges.

Talk about a guy who could pick a fight in a phone booth—if there were phone booths anymore . . . On today's Daily Rundown, in a conversation about charter schools, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel repeatedly insulted host Chuck Todd, suggesting he was ignorant about charter schools, was "backward" looking, and that being in Washington had affected "your brain." Todd generally took it in stride, but after one insult couldn't suppress a "wow" of amazement at Rahm's rudeness. View the video here.

When these four teens were trying to come up with something to perform in Louder Than a Bomb, a youth poetry festival that reaches teens through after-school programs, they took their task seriously. Through their spoken-word performance of “Hide Your Schools, Hide Your Homes, Hide Your Children, Cause He’s Wrecking it All,” they unabashedly slammed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel with a passion you can both see and hear. …

(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....

First-term Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel could face a challenge from the mentor of his old boss, President Barack Obama. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle may have her sights on the job, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, though she insists she is running only for re-election this year. […] Emanuel has alienated the black community, the Sun-Times’s Carol Marin notes, by closing neighborhood schools while opening charter schools. He also has angered police and firefighters in contract talks. …

Top Illinois politicians say a multimillion-dollar institute bound for Chicago will be the nation’s flagship research site for digital manufacturing. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday publicly heralded Chicago’s selection by the Defense Department as the site of one of two manufacturing institutes. …

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....

Chicago Public School officials say they’re canceling classes ahead of Monday’s bitter cold temperatures, after first saying they would be open. The reversal comes after withering criticism from the Chicago Teachers Union, though officials say they made the decision after (they) “evaluated the situation again.” …

On Thursday, a town hall meeting hosted by Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to address gun violence exploded into a revolt against “Chicago Machine” politics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the aldermen in City Hall, with panel and audience members calling to vote out their elected officials. One 82-year-old preacher even called for “Tea Party” style meetings in some of Chicago’s south side communities such as Altgeld Gardens and Trumbull Park.

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...