Free Republic

A barbecue at a South Side park was interrupted by gunfire early Tuesday, leaving Antian Hardmon, Ayanna Northern, and Tyrone Spikes dead, and three other people injured in the Fuller Park neighborhood.About 30 people were enjoying the barbecue, a memorial for someone who died in a crash years ago, when more than 15 shots rang out, according to a woman who wished to be identified only as “Shorty.”Five people were shot about 12:10 a.m. in the 300 block of West 42nd Street when two males opened fire from an alley, according to Chicago Police. Lawn chairs and beer cans could...

By John F. Di Leo - Reflections on the latest tax hike request from the City of Chicago... Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked for a massive tax increase. No surprise there. Massive tax increases have been the stock-in-trade of the Democratic Party for a century, so it barely merits comment nowadays. It’s what you expect when you elect Democrats (the sad thing is that you expect an equal level of opposition to taxes when you elect Republicans, but contrary to the laws of physics, such an equal and opposite reaction rarely appears). The oddity of this new one –...

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in Chicago and attended the private, prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. The pre-K-12 Lab Schools are progressive institutions ... resident Obama’s two daughters attended the school before moving to Washington in 2009, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children are enrolled there now. And in the fall, Duncan’s children will be attending Lab, too, while his wife works there. .... his children will attend a progressive private school in Chicago, a school that does not follow key school reform policies that his Education Department has set for public schools. It does not, for example,...

Hillary Clinton is not the only person facing trouble over the use of personal email to avoid the pesky necessity of turning over communications to public scrutiny. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has just been sued by the Chicago Tribune over his use of private emails and texts with regard to public business. Steve Mills of the Tribune reports: The Chicago Tribune filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that Mayor Rahm Emanuel violated state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages. The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, asks...

The Chicago Tribune is suing Mayor Rahm Emanuel over claims he violated open records laws for failing to disclose personal emails and texts used to conduct city business. Thursday’s lawsuit asks a judge to force the former White House chief of staff to produce documents. The lawsuit argues that the newspaper’s Freedom of Information Act requests to Emanuel’s administration have been “met with a pattern of non-compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” …

CHICAGO – Mayor Rahm Emanuel pitched a massive property tax hike Tuesday as a "last resort" to correct Chicago's financial footing, suggesting the only alternative for the nation's third-largest city would include severe cuts to police and fire services, recycling programs, pothole repair and even rodent control. Emanuel, who needs approval from state lawmakers and the governor for at least part of his sweeping plan, outlined a $543 million property tax over four years, a $45 million tax to modernize schools, and other new fees for residential garbage pickup, e-cigarettes and ride-sharing services. The property tax revenue would go toward...

Chicago already is one of the most expensive cities in the world -- No. 7, according to a report by financial firm UBS. But the cost of living soon could rise even more, if Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets his way. The Windy City mayor is pushing a $500 million property tax increase, the largest in the city's history, as a way to balance an almost $700 million deficit. On top of that, surrounding Cook County just raised the sales tax to the highest in the nation, at 10.25 percent, while considering a hodgepodge of other fees. And the state...

NEW YORK – Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd., has died, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday, which cited sources familiar with the matter

On Wednesday, recent Islamic convert and former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote a column for The Washington Post in which he referred to 2016 GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump as “[t]he biggest enemy to the principles of the Constitution.” His proof? Trump’s alleged “vendetta against the press,” i.e., Trump’s willingness to take Fox News host Megyn Kelly to task for asking unfair questions AND Univision political activist Jorge Ramos to task for rudely interrupting his press conference. The proud Islamist also excoriated Trump for the “absurd, uninformed or just plain incorrect” statements — all of them in fact correct —...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to call for the largest property tax increase in modern Chicago history to raise enough money to make a major pension payment for police and firefighters next year, the mayor's City Council floor leader and a City Hall source told the Chicago Tribune late Wednesday.. The mayor also plans to push a new garbage collection tax, a new per-ride fee on taxis and ride-hailing services such as Uber and a new tax on electronic cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. ....The property tax increase Emanuel is mulling would far exceed what the mayor himself said during...

Speaking to Iowa public radio last week, Mrs. Clinton sought to lay the responsibility for her own irresponsibility on someone else. “I was permitted to and used a personal email..."Which, to me, immediately begs the question, "Who permitted this?"Clinton history is replete with partial answers followed by questions, followed by more half-truths, accusations and prevarications, wiggle-wording their way around the rabbit hole. It is a favored Clinton strategy which is often conjoined with coordinated attacks upon the accusers. The objective being, to run out the clock.To what end, though, the Presidency? Is American electoral math so screwed, skewed and unbalanced that all Mrs. Clinton has to do to...

A second financial ratings agency has downgraded Chicago Public Schools’ debt rating to junk status, reinforcing Wall Street’s dim view of the district’s finances. Fitch Ratings on Monday downgraded billions of school board bonds to its “BB+” ranking, which it said reflected the “limited progress” CPS has made to address a vast budget gap as well as the district’s meager cash reserves. Fitch said those reserves are likely to be extinguished by next year. District officials have announced $200 million in spending cuts. Fitch said the district also will require “a combination of tax increases, contributions from the state and...

How the senator from New York could change the game in Congress if he has the guts. In April 2010, following a series of deliberate slights and insults by the Obama administration directed at Israel and its prime minister, including a threat by the State Department that the depth of the US-Israel alliance would depend on the progress of peace talks, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s ranking Democrat and Obama ally placed a call to the White House. The senator had had just about enough. He informed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in no uncertain terms that the...

Senior Obama administration officials, including the White House chief of staff, knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence, according to some 3,000 pages of correspondence released by the State Department late Tuesday night The chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, requested Clinton's email address on Sept. 5, 2009, according to one email. His request came three months after top Obama strategist David Axelrod asked the same question of one of Clinton's top aides

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers and parents protested at City Hall Thursday morning following 1,400 layoffs and $200 million in cuts to meet a teachers' pension deadline. Mayor Rahm Emanuel delayed a $634 million pension payment until the eleventh-hour on Tuesday, waiting to see any relief would come from state lawmakers. It never came. The mayor and Interim CPS CEO Jesse Ruiz outlined on Wednesday who would be laid off and where cuts would be made. Ruiz said most of the 1,400 jobs cut were in administration and special education programs. Very few teachers were laid...

Chicago school and city officials detailed $200 million in cuts—including layoffs, scaled-back maintenance and reduced transportation—to the nation’s third-largest school district Wednesday, one day after the district paid a $634 million pension bill officials said it couldn’t afford. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said schools would still open on time in the coming school year and class sizes wouldn’t be affected. He put the blame on state legislators for worsening the situation and said a property tax increase was up for consideration. The district had to borrow and factor in the cuts to make the pension payment by Tuesday’s deadline because legislators,...

Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is famous for saying that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste since it allows you to do things you might not be able to get done except for the emotions of the moment spurring calls to action. Chicago’s bloody Memorial Day weekend, which saw a dozen people killed -- including a four-year-old-girl -- certainly proved no exception to Rahm’s Rule as he called for, wait for it, stricter gun control as he spoke at a luncheon honoring police officers for valor and service. “It’s not just about...

A reference to the gun violence that has left parts of Chicago feeling like a war zone to many residents, the word is believed to have been coined by local rappers years ago. But it is taking on another life as the working title of a new Spike Lee movie that is expected to be filmed here this summer. Local politicians have lined up against the title. Mr. Lee has been confronted by Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who told him in a meeting last month that he was “not happy” about the name.

.....Chicago Police Officers Jerome Finnigan, left, and Timothy McDermott with an unknown man in a photo believed to be taken between 1999 and 2003. | Court file photo Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday had two choice words for the now-fired Chicago Police officer who joined another former officer in posing with rifles as they stood over a black man lying on his belly with deer antlers on his head. “Good riddance.” “Let me be clear: That photo does not represent the values of the city of Chicago that we all share in common. It doesn’t represent the values of the...