Free Republic

Former congressional candidate Vernon Robinson sounds resigned, and more than a little tired, when you ask him to explain his defeat. "The 2006 election was not a referendum on immigration," he says. "I would have liked it to be, but it didn't happen." That's an understatement. In the tumultuous political year of 2006, Robinson, a former city councilman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, became one of the country's most notorious voices for a crackdown on illegal immigration. In March, as the Republican-led House of Representatives wrestled with a harsh reform bill that would build a wall on the border and classify...

U.S. District Judge David Coar ruled Friday that (IL) Secretary of State Jesse White’s office violated the First Amendment when it refused to make license plates saying “Choose Life.” *** UPDATE *** The Choose Life IL people told me they’ll be posting a press release relatively soon on their website. It appears that just about everybody is in DC for the march today. Jesse White spokesman Dave Druker: “We’re studying the opinion. We’re going to ask the Attorney general to appeal it… We don’t think we have the authority without legislative approval to create the license plates.” From the opinion:...

new data center site selection study echoes findings from a similar one last year: the Midwest is best. Princeton, N.J.-based site selection specialists, The Boyd Company Inc., has published its list of the best places to build a data center, taking into account 50 cities in the U.S. and focused on the healthcare industry. The list compares the annual operating costs of building a 150,000-square-foot facility with 150 employees. Sioux Falls, S.D........$16,131,793 Ft. Walton/Destin, Fla..$16,386,387 Pensacola, Fla..........$16,562,083 Jacksonville, Fla.......$16,879,315 Lee County, Fla.........$17,022,961 San Antonio, Texas......$17,054,703 Ft. Wayne, Ind. ........$17,062,231 Orlando.................$17,076,394 Sarasota/Bradenton, Fla.$17,136,032 Birmingham, Ala.........$17,185,474 ...."This is the outsourcing of the...

A CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS TO FIGHT EMINENT DOMAIN As many of you may know, the Village of Arlington Hts. intends to use its eminent domain authority to seize the property of small business owners and turn it over to a big box retailer along with 19 millions dollars of “revenue sharing”. We can stop this! We MUST stop this. This Saturday and Sunday, we need you to make the time to join with us as we go door to door into the neighborhoods of Arlington Hts. and tell residents what their very own government is doing. Specifically, we will be...

Is this Shopping Center Blighted? Place your Vote! . . . . Go to "Add Comment" The tenants are mainly successful entrepreneurs with booming business The Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois is voting to seize the International Plaza Shopping Center, by eminent domain, in order to transfer ownership to a private developer who plans to build a SuperTarget. This will significantly hurt and, in many instances, put out of business over 70 tenants in the shopping center. How can they do this? The only legal way is to declare the property "blighted," which they have done. Despite the fact that...

An invited audience including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez gathered at the National Geographic Society's auditorium in Washington Monday night for a screening of "Bella," an independently produced feature film. No mere movie, it offers hope for the beleaguered anti-abortion movement to reverse the political tide running against it. This was the eighth such screening in Washington. Monday night's audience reflected the reaction in more than 100 showings nationwide: an emotional experience for a stunning exhibition of cinema art that unexpectedly won a Toronto Film Festival award. It is no propaganda film but a dramatic depiction of choices facing an...

A key question Republicans asked on the Senate floor the day Governor Blagojevich's All Kids health care program was passed a year ago was a simple one: What are the residency requirements to be covered by All Kids? There was no definitive answer given that day. That's because there are no residency requirements to qualify for Illinois' universal health care program for residents under age 19. An All Kids enrollee can be an illegal immigrant. Illegal immigrants are not covered by Medicaid but they do qualify for Blagojevich's All Kids program. And indeed, almost half that have been enrolled in...

Saying the Kane County Chronicle's management was negligent in its oversight of former columnist Bill Page, jurors awarded Illinois Supreme Court Justice Robert Thomas $7 million in his libel lawsuit against the newspaper and Page. A Kane County jury deliberated for nine hours over two days before reaching the verdict Tuesday afternoon. More than 4.5 of those hours were focused on deciding how much money to award Thomas, jurors said. Thomas dropped his head into his hands and shed tears of relief upon hearing the verdict. Page had a wide-eyed look of shock. Thomas regained his composure and mouthed “Thank...

For the last 15 years, the overall trend in IT has been towards outsourcing -- but that trend is apparently beginning to reverse.<.p< The Sloan Management Review (Summer 2006, p. 12) notes that according to a recent Deloitte Consulting LLP study, 70 % of large organizations studied "had negative experiences with outsourcing … [and] 64 % of the organizations … have brought at least some functions back in-house because of their negative experiences." Moreover, the same article notes that IT finds outsourcing "increasingly dangerous." Other reasons for moving back in-house include the "lack of flexibility and velocity ... to handle...

Well, here’s one way to spin bad news. The (IL) Auditor General releases a report that shows the I-SaveRx plan is an expensive mess and violates federal law and the governor issues a press release announcing that he’s expanding the program. Here’s a couple of grafs from the guv’s press release: Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today announced that the State of Illinois will expand its innovative I-SaveRx drug importation program to state employees and dependents. Currently, the program is available and intended for senior citizens and the uninsured, and covers the citizens of Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri and Vermont. The...

People have the money, but struggle to find contractors to do the job. A push to train thousands of new construction workers on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast found an unlikely pupil in Sandra Ramsay. . . . .The worker shortage has been tempered by the estimated 100,000 Hispanic workers who moved to the Gulf Coast region after last year’s storm. One-quarter of the workers in New Orleans after Katrina are undocumented Latinos, according to a recent study by researchers from Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley. The study also notes the federal government has waived certain immigration...

As for the conservative newspaper - let's do it! I have decided to write satire instead of real news, but we need some reals news too (at least maybe we do). Below your will find my first article entitle "It's Inevitable: Metrosexual Studies" Its Inevitable: Metrosexual Studies, by Roy H Nyberg Campus diversity has come a long way since the days when Madonna was edgy. African-American Studies, Asian-American Studies, and the brand new field of Homosexual studies. However, the universities commitment to diversity is sadly less than complete. Where does an edgy urban male with boyish good looks fit into...

The first time Angelica Reyes was wounded while serving a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, she felt as if she moved in slow motion inside the thick, red smoke that enveloped her Army humvee. "I know I was going fast, but inside it was real, real slow," said the 21 year-old Elgin resident, who suffered third-degree burns to her thigh and a ruptured eardrum in the suicide bombing. The second time Reyes was woulded, three months later, she touched her cheek and saw her hand covered in blood from a shrapnel wound. "I was hysterica, I couldn't belive I...

WORKSHIP GIVES TIPS FOR RECOGNIZING DISCRIMINATIONSeveral Representatives from government agencies gave presentations to a mostly Latino audience at a "Know Your Rights" workshop, held June 29 at Gail Boren Public Library in Elgin (IL).Los empleadores que le exijan a sus empleados hablar solo en ingles en su lugar de trabajo estarian quebrantando la ley, de acuerdo con el Titulo VII de law ley de Derechos Civiles de 1964.....sidebar

CHICAGO — (EFE) A collective lawsuit filed in Chicago seeks to declare a law unconstitutional that will demand proof of citizenship of 50 million Medicaid beneficiaries of throughout the country. The law, which went into effect on July 1, could lead to the loss of medical benefits for millions of low-income residents if they are not able to prove their status by presenting a passport, birth certificate, or other special documents, according to the lawsuit. In the lawsuit, which names U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt as the defendant, the Federal District Court is petitioned for an...

While surfing through the web, I ran across a rather vexing headline on a site called badeagle.com; it read: “Mexican Women Beg: Close the Border”. My first impression was of outrage! How dare they support the wall! How dare they support a “roundup” of the hard-working illegals that risk life and limb to support them! I was nauseous. “Bad Mexicans!” I said to myself. Where is their sense of solidarity and brotherhood? Then, I decided to read beyond the headline. These women are rather spectacular. They are the women of Tecapulco, Guerrero. (Guerrero, although one of the poorest states in...

BANGALORE, India - After graduating from Northwestern University last year, Nate Linkon contemplated job offers in Chicago and New York. But he chose a less conventional path and started his career here, in India's booming tech capital. The 22-year-old Milwaukee native works in marketing at Infosys Technologies Ltd., India's second-largest software exporter. He is part of a small but growing number of young Americans moving to Bangalore and other Indian cities to beef up their resumes, launch businesses or study globalization in one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Despite the traffic-choked streets, unsteady electrical supply, occasional digestive troubles and other...

Harvest of help: Study shows too few Latinos visiting food pantries Estudio demuestra que pocos latinos visitan las despensas. (excerpts) Although there are myriad food pantries in Chicago and the suburbs, not enough Latinos take home the free food (that the pantries) offer, according to a 2006 America's Second Harvest study.Last year the Chicago network of almost 600 food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters served almost 500,000 people, but only about 14 percent of them were Latinos, according to GCFD spokesman Bob Dolgan.In the collar counties the situation is similar - only 13.2 percent of its 187,500 yearly clients are...

Oberweis statement on Rick Garcia, member of Gov. Blagojevich's Hate Crimes Commission "It is my understanding that Rick Garcia, a member of Rod Blagojevich's 'Hate Crimes Commission' has called Cardinal Francis George, the venerable leader of our Catholic Church in Chicago, a 'bigot' because he teaches and promotes the time-honored tenets of the Catholic Church. I also understand that Garcia has labeled as 'rank bigots,' millions of Illinois citizens who believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. This type of anti-Christian/anti-Catholic intolerance has no place in any state sanctioned commission purporting to advocate tolerance. I call for Rod Blagojevich to...

Driving on I55 to and from Chicago, I saw convoys of CUNEJO and CAVALLO headed north; 2 weeks in a row on FRI, SUN, TUE and WED. CUNEJO and CAVALLO are upstart buslines competing with Greyhound and private charters for immigrant traffic. I did not realize these new examples of capitalism now have so many buses. I have previously noted on FR that historically many Mexican immigrants are seasonal workers who go home to their families in November and return in Feb-Mar. The NET number of immigrants has historically been quite different from the GROSS number of immigrants. But 2005...