Free Republic

Chicago is a bloody mess. Last year, Chicago had 762 homicides — more than New York and Los Angeles combined. This represents an astounding 57 percent increase from the 2015 murder rate. On Sunday night, CBS’s 60 Minutes rightfully expressed concern about the fall in stops and arrests by police over the last year. Criminals have seemingly become emboldened as a result of the decrease in arrests. The 60 Minutes piece quotes Garry McCarthy — Chicago’s Police Superintendent up until a year ago — as saying that “officers are under attack, that is how they feel.” This isn’t a new...

Following the horrendous act of four young black adults in Chicago, wherein a young white man with a disability was kidnapped and tortured, Twitter exploded (understandably) in outrage. Very quickly the hashtag #BLMKidnapping started to trend in first place across the country, Americans furious over not only the absolutely awful crime, but the lackluster response in Chicago. We’ve all been waiting for leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement to denounce the crime, at the very least, but instead people like Shaun King tweeted this … Shaun King ✔ @ShaunKing I'll reply to the white supremacist #BLMKidnapping hashtag later this...

full title....................Trump blasts Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel for record-setting 762 homicides and 4,331 shooting victims in 2016 and says he 'must ask for Federal help' if he can't fix Windy City..............................Donald Trump used his Twitter bully pulpit on Monday to blast Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for allowing his city's murder and firearms shooting rates to spiral out of control. 'Chicago murder rate is record setting – 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016,' Trump tweeted. 'If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help!'

---the usual sanctimonious blather --including the last sentence in this excerpt----"But in the here and now — to curb the carnage today — it is hard to overstate the importance of better gun laws and a powerful and professional police force. We strongly support new state laws to get and keep illegal guns off the street. Most significantly, we support legislation pending in Springfield that would increase minimum prison sentences for gun crimes. Illegal guns are killing our city."

The refrain is heard almost as often as the fatal gunshots: The way to reduce Chicago’s gun violence is tougher prison sentences for repeat gun offenders, keeping them off the streets and decreasing the city’s mounting death toll. That idea, pushed by the mayor, police superintendent and others, shifts pressure from patrol officers of the city’s West and South sides to the Capitol, where legislators will consider how to balance law and order with finding alternatives to imprisoning young blacks and other minorities.In that building, in the same Senate seat where Barack Obama launched his political career and focused on...

There are many unhinged things about the reaction of the Democrats after their disastrous presidential candidate lost, but the one that irks me beyond despair is their immediate and fierce defense of people they apparently know who are in our country illegally. There have been many reasons to dream that federal authorities would arrest these irresponsible elected officials. The worst being the arrogant and incompetent (the same combo Rob Ford displayed) Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. This guy is presiding over a city that is beyond bankrupt and a murder zone like areas of Iraq. Yet he has decided to...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Friday that his city and the state of Illinois support the values he and his wife are teaching their children, including a law in place that “embraces gay marriage.” “Amy and I teach our children about that differences should be something that you look to, learn from, etc.,” Emanuel said at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., during a discussion focused on cities in the wake of Trump’s election and the UK’s exit from the European Union. …

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel begs President-elect Trump for leniency Chicago is one of the best places to live in America if you’re one of the millions of illegal aliens present in the country — and free-spending, lawbreaking Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying his best to keep it that way. Emanuel (D), who used to be a congressman and then President Obama’s chief of staff, dropped by Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday to urge President-elect Donald Trump to abandon his campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities.

94-year-old WWII veteran beaten during SW Side robbery; suspect crashed stolen SUV By Evelyn Holmes Thursday, December 08, 2016 CHICAGO (WLS) -- Police are looking for a man who allegedly beat a 94-year-old woman, stole her purse and took off in a stolen vehicle before crashing it in Chicago's Garfield Ridge neighborhood. The victim's daughter, Judy Dusk, said her mother, Josephine Regnier, is a World War II Navy veteran. Dusk said she was waiting for one of her daughters outside her building in the 5100-block of South Long Avenue to pick her up to go to the dentist when she...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel met with President-elect Donald Trump in New York on Wednesday morning, using the discussion to urge Trump to reconsider his positions on immigration. During his 45-minute meeting with the president-elect in his personal office high above Manhattan in Trump Tower, Emanuel hand-delivered a letter from the mayors of some of the nation's largest cities urging Trump to continue protections offered to young immigrants instituted under President Barack Obama's administration. The two-page letter asked Trump to continue Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the provision that protects young, so-called Dreamers who came to the country before the age...

Last year, the Emanuel administration slipped through a tax on streaming video and cloud computing. Now, again without public hearings, City Hall is targeting bars and restaurants with a surcharge on satellite TV feeds. Earlier this month, the city served notice that its 9 percent amusement tax applies to businesses that subscribe to satellite TV services. The impact likely will be felt most by public spaces that buy premium subscriptions for NFL and college games that can easily run $5,000 to $10,000 a year, meaning their annual taxes would come to at least $450. "This is obviously a huge concern...

The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, has announced that Chicago will remain a sanctuary city and that it will not cooperate with ICE and defy any orders given by a President Donald Trump. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised Monday to defy President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation orders and vowed that the city will always be a so-called sanctuary city. Chicago laws prohibit government workers and police officers from asking the locals about their immigration status, according to the Chicago Tribune. Emanuel reaffirmed that the policy will continue. "To all those who are, after Tuesday's election, very nervous and filled with anxiety...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used personal email accounts and a personal email domain to communicate with government officials and political figures, according to a published report based on hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks. Emanuel’s personal account information turned up among the thousands of emails from John Podesta, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, the Chicago Tribune reported. Clinton has come under fire for her use of a private email server because doing so potentially jeopardized classified information. Emanuel registered his personal email domain, “rahmemail.com,” on May 16, 2011, the day he was sworn into office. The hacked emails also...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used a private email server to communicate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, leaked emails reveal. Emanuel, a former House lawmaker who served early on in the Obama administration, sent an email to Podesta asking him to consider Brian DeSplinter for a position with Clinton’s campaign. Emnauel sent the email from the address “mayor_re@rahmemail.com.”The email address is still active, according to Mailtester.com, and is run through Google’s Gmail service. This is unlike Clinton who used a private email server based out of her Chappaqua, New York home.WikiLeaks published the email chain online Friday in...

Last month, the Los Angeles Police Commission--which sets policy for the Los Angeles police department--ordered officers to run away rather than confront armed aggressors. Written by agenda driven mayoral appointees, the new order is designed to placate Jesse Jackson, Black Lives Matter and others who prefer the death of police officers to that of armed Blacks suspects. Never to be outliberaled by fellow political hucksters in other Democrat-run cities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered the formation of the Police Accountability Task Force, its mission, to manufacture rules guaranteed to place Chicago’s police officers in lose-lose situations; that is, lose your...

The homicide count in Chicago has soared past 500 so far this year, exceeding the total number of murders for all of last year. The bloody death toll of 512 was reached after a violent holiday weekend where 65 people in the city were shot, 13 fatally, authorities said. The figure is a 20-year high.By contrast, there have been 409 homicides combined in New York and Los Angeles through late August. …

After threatening to sue, the Chicago Tribune has obtained data from the city’s police department that tracks every time an officer has opened fire in the city over the past six years. The vast majority of those hit were black men or boys. There were 435 police shootings from 2010 through 2015, in which officers killed 92 people and wounded 170 others. In all, officers fired 2,623 bullets. The newspaper’s findings show about four out of every five people shot were African-American males. It found that about half of the officers involved were African-American or Hispanic and most of them...

I’m taking a vacation this week so I thought it would be fun to reflect back on the Wons first Martha’s Vineyard vacation compliments of the taxpayer. First, from August 25, 2009: If The Shoe Fits (or not) Sheeze! Can you believe all the hoo-ha over Lady M’s tootsies? Haven’t I got enough to worry about from the ankles up – and please, no canckle jokes from you little zumba Everyready bunnies.I would think the MSM would be following the escapades of Rahm, the only toes in this administration that count. He’s down in Florida this week trying to stem...

Leaders from three West Side gang factions allegedly met last week to discuss plans to shoot members of the Chicago Police Department in response to the fatal police shooting of Paul O’Neal. The meeting took place Thursday between higher-ups from the Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlers, according to an alert issued to department members the day after the meeting. The Four Corner Hustlers “provided guns” and have “a sniper in place” though authorities do not know where, according to the alert. The Four Corner Hustlers also are supplying the other two gangs with automatic weapons, which all...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called for a new tax on city water and sewer bills to stabilize the city's largest pension fund, a move he portrayed as his latest tough decision to secure Chicago's financial future. Emanuel's plan, which would increase the average water and sewer bill by 30 percent over the next four years, was quickly met with resistance from some aldermen who argued the city would be better off adding business taxes or even raising property taxes again to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to keep the city's municipal workers'...