Free Republic

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge in Chicago has ordered Governor Rod Blagojevich released on his own recognizance after the Democrat was hit with federal corruption charges. The governor was arrested at his home Tuesday on charges he conspired to sell or trade President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. U.S. District Judge Nan Nolan said "Good afternoon, governor" in greeting Blagojevich at the afternoon bond hearing. The governor was wearing sweat pants, gym shoes and an athletic shirt. He was released on a signature bond that specifies that he'll forfeit $4,500 bond if he doesn't appear...

I doubt too many people around Barack Obama would have any criticisms for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald or offer any defenses of Illinois politics now. In 2005, however, Obama’s chief political adviser did both in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. While Fitzgerald probed the endemic corruption in the Land of Lincoln, David Axelrod scolded him for criminalizing the normal trading of interests in Chicago-style politics: Patrick Fitzgerald’s charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have drawn a chorus of shock and outrage. But Barack Obama’s message man David Axelrod once staked out a much more nuanced position on Fitzgerald’s anti-corruption...

<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>

Organized labor helped elect Barack Obama and now eagerly awaits his promised support for its top priority—a bill that would make it easier to set up union locals. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to create local bargaining units without winning the vote of a majority of workers in a secret ballot. The local unit would be certified if a majority of workers endorsed it by signing an authorization card handed out by union organizers. Fair enough? Not really. The so-called card-check bill would not protect workers and it would not be "free choice." It would strip away...

President-elect Barack Obama's 3 million campaign volunteers got re-enlistment notices this week. Campaign manager David Plouffe, in a mass e-mail sent Wednesday to former workers, asked how much time they can spare for four missions integral to Obama's effort to transform his victory into a broader political movement. The volunteers' options are, Plouffe wrote: -Campaign for progressive state and local candidates -Undertake grassroots local efforts to advance Obama's agenda -Train others in Obama's organizing techniques -Focus on local political issues. "Obama's building a political machine," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington research group.

Regarding Dr. John David's commentary, "Make it Easier to Unionize Workplace": Labor unions certainly have their place in a contemporary American economy, but not at the expense of employee free choice and economic security. Indeed, the Employee Free Choice Act would severely erode the freedom enjoyed by employees for nearly 75 years to make a private, fully-informed decision about whether or not they want a union to represent them. Too often, the losing party in a union election - the company or the union - blames its loss on the opposing party's "coercive and underhanded" tactics. In reality though, the...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. labor unions, having helped Barack Obama win the presidency, entertain high hopes he will enact their agenda to bolster their negotiating power with employers and increase their numbers after decades of decline. Unions have "an unprecedented amount of leverage" after turning out white middle-class voters for Obama in battleground industrial states like Pennsylvania and Ohio that he won in Tuesday's election but had lost in the Democratic nominating primaries, said University of Illinois-Chicago labor expert Robert Bruno. "American workers won this election," said Anna Burger, chairman of the labor coalition "Change to Win" at a news...

"... 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...

96-Year-Old Gangster Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy Charges Wednesday, February 28, 2007 FORT LAUDERDALE — A 96-year-old gangster who oversaw robberies, money laundering, bank fraud and other crimes for one of the United States' largest Mafia families pleaded guilty Wednesday, but because of his age will likely be sentenced to house arrest. Albert "The Old Man" Facchiano pleaded guilty to a Florida charge of racketeering conspiracy and a New York charge of conspiracy to tamper with a witness. From 1994 to 2006, Facchiano supervised associates of the Genovese crime family who committed robberies, money laundering, bank fraud and possessed stolen property,...

Now that the United States Senate's plan to grant amnesty to over 12 million illegal immigrants has reached a deadlock, it would be interesting to look back at how such proposed law-making would have affected other characters in American history. Al Capone legally immigrated to the United States in the early 1900's, eventually creating one of the most notorious crime syndicates our nation has ever known. Capone, who came to America from Italy, amassed a great fortune through his participation in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling during the Roaring 20's. Capone thrived in Chicago where a corrupt city government and police...

<p>The United States, rightly unsparing in its efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda operatives killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, is in no position to criticize Israel for assassinating Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. Yassin is lionized in certain quarters of the media as a Muslim spiritual leader, but his enduring legacy is the skill he exercised to motivate Muslims to kill Jews by killing themselves.</p>