Free Republic

When he announced the charges in late 2008, Chicago's U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, came at Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich with all the bravado of Eliot Ness going after Al Capone in the movie "The Untouchables." He told a throng of reporters that Blagojevich had embarked on a "corruption crime spree" and added, with a touch of the melodramatic, that the Democratic governor's crimes "would make Lincoln turn over in his grave." Blagojevich responded by hitting the talk show circuit, calling the charges unfounded and criticizing Fitzgerald. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, shown here in June, is seen as a "prosecutor's prosecutor"...

An Essay by the Rev. Nancy Cahalan The Rev. Nancy Cahalan is a contributor to RFFM.org. Cahalan is a Pastor who resides in southern Illinois. In 1976, I graduated high school. Because that year was our nation's bicentennial year, NBC ran an essay contest for graduating seniors. The title of the essay was "What Is An American?" I entered that contest and became one of the finalists. I have been thinking about that essay lately and how things have changed in this country in the 30 some years since I graduated high school. The America that I see today is...

<p>Two of the most popular liberal news sites are calling for violence against Republicans for obstructing the radical agenda of Barack Obama.</p> <p>CNN and Huffington Post have each published op-eds this week by regular contributors with headlines that explicitly call for Barack Obama to use violent gangland tactics against his political opponents.</p>

The buyer of a pretty property in northern Wisconsin will get a former hideout of Chicago mobster Al Capone along with a bar and restaurant complete with portholes to shoot from

You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that?-Jim Malone (Sean Connery), “The Untouchables” President Obama is certainly taking Jim Malone’s advice when it comes to his spending programs. John Kyl (R-Arizona) has rightfully acknowledged that the stimulus plan is not stimulating the economy. Nor, should we have expected that it would have. The $787 billion stimulus bill was a pork-laden...

The city of Chicago is one of the few major metropolitan areas which runs away from its past at every opportunity. Yet, indeed, the very construction of the city led to the term "underworld." And with rampant corruption controlled by infamous individuals like "Big Jim" Colosimo, Al Capone, Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, Murray "The Camel" Humphrey and Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, Chicago can hardly bury its past--no pun intended. Since the turn of the 20th century, what Carl Sandburg referred to as the "City of Big Shoulders" was perhaps the center of organized crime in the United States. Though New...

Extorting Children's Hospital is a new political low. Chicagoans and Illinoisans love political scandal the way that Milanese love opera. We trade recollections, like baseball cards, about the secretary of state (Paul Powell) who stashed money in shoeboxes, and the Chicago mayor (Harold Washington) whose birthday was April 15 but never filed his income tax return. Rod Blagojevich stands a chance to be the fourth Illinois governor in recent history, and the second in a row, to wind up in prison. This run suggests that Illinoisans are indifferent to political corruption, and it's hard to argue with such an impressive...

<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

"... the community organizer ... must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.'     -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals "THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT --- An analysis of the Alinsky Model."  -- Hillary Clinton, BA Honors Thesis, Wellesley College, 1969. "(Barack) Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing...."  -- The Nation  A psychopath is a person without conscience; someone who constantly breaks the moral rules of the community. Saul Alinsky was a "community organizer" who found a career that...

Barack Obama campaigns with promises of change and he regularly blasts corporate insiders yet a high-ranking campaign advisor and top fundraiser has received millions of dollars in the sort of highly questionable loans that the Illinois Senator blames for infecting the economy and creating a home foreclosure crisis. A major newspaper broke the story over the weekend that contradicts Obama’s infamous change rhetoric and ardent critiques of well-connected corporate insiders who get perks that most Americans cannot even fathom. It turns out that the bundler (committed to raising at least $100,000) who is in charge of finding Obama a running...

As Vladimir Putin nears the end of what he insists will be his last term as president, analysts can not help but notice how different the country is today from the one he inherited from his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in 2000. Most critics have focused on the way the Kremlin has increased its control of the media and eliminated regional gubernatorial elections. There have also been far-reaching changes in the ownership and management of several of the country's largest and richest energy and metals companies, however. Here, too, the Kremlin once again has begun to play a more intrusive role....