Free Republic

Following a particularly violent Fourth of July weekend, violence in Chicago continued Saturday with 21 people shot overnight, including three people wounded outside a Northwest Side pizza restaurant. The shooting took place around 10 p.m. Friday in the 6000 block of West Fullerton Avenue when someone opened fire on three people outside Marco’s Pizza in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, according to authorities.

Jasmine Curry, a mother of five and five months pregnant, lay dead along Chicago’s Dan Ryan expressway Wednesday morning, the latest victim in Chicago’s epidemic of gunfire with a bullet to the head. It was uncommon that she was shot on the expressway, not uncommon that someone from her neighborhood was killed. In fact, Jasmine was not even the first person in her family to be gunned down. The gangland vendettas raged on the South and West Sides of Chicago over the holiday weekend. Thirteen people were killed, another 58 wounded as the bullets flew. Police were fired on and...

I thought this was kind of amusing...

"The solution does not just include policing — although we'll continue to look for ways to put more police where they're needed. We also have to give our young people alternatives to the street, and as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors." — Mayor Rahm Emanuel, on Chicago's blood-soaked Fourth of July weekend As Sunday night crept (no doubt cautiously) to Monday morning, residents of the South Chicago neighborhood endured a firefight. They witnessed a tide of mayhem worthy of urban war zones worldwide. This is not how Chicago wants to build its reputation...

A key former adviser behind President Obama's healthcare law said the traditional role of health insurers would be "dead" by 2025, predicting massive changes in the industry. "By 2025, insurance companies as we know them — taking in premiums and paying out — dead," Ezekiel Emanuel ... Emanuel, the older brother of former White House chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has long argued that health insurers will shift away an employer-based system. By 2025.. ... Most Americans currently receive health insurance through their employers. ObamaCare includes an employer mandate, which requires companies with 50 or more...

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...

CHICAGO — In Washington, he is “Rahmbo,” the ruthless, profane operative who survived the Clinton White House despite being vanquished by the first lady. In Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has been dubbed the “murder mayor” by one critic, a snipe at the city’s high homicide rate. In Washington, he’s the campaign mastermind who reportedly mused about a 2016 presidential run if Hillary Clinton takes a pass. In Chicago, he’s the ham-fisted gentrifer who’s been tripped up by the city’s entrenched racial politics. In Washington, he’s the star of the CNN series “Chicagoland” — a careful keeper of his image whose office...

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.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced a proposal Wednesday that would require all gun sales in the city to be videotaped, as part of a plan to allow gun stores back in Chicago under very tight restrictions. The measure, which would also ban gun stores near schools and parks, was introduced Wednesday at a city council meeting without discussion. It was then referred to the council’s Public Safety Committee. A vote on the proposal has not been scheduled. …

Obama camp angry, embarrassed over 2009 Nobel Prize: official The Associated Press Posted: May 15, 2014 5:24 PM ET Last Updated: May 15, 2014 5:24 PM ET A senior Norwegian diplomat says his country's former ambassador to the United States was given a verbal lashing by Barack Obama's chief of staff when the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Morten Wetland said Thursday the ambassador, Wegger Stroemmen, was approached by Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor, who accused Norway of "fawning" to the newly elected U.S. leader. Wetland, the Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations at the time,...

Fortunately that 29% will vote as many times as it takes to get him reelected. 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...

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."