Free Republic

Nobody is that stupid .... surprise, the voters of Chicago are!!!!! Let's go Brandon, the new Chicago cheer, does not refer to Slow Joe but to the new Chicago Mayor. The new Mayor has vowed to reduce school class sizes ... they will be reduced because of the number of children shot and killed on the way to school. Not to worry, Social Workers will be on the murder scenes to help relatives handle the deaths and assist in getting the organ traffic paperwork signed. Be assured that although your children will be guaranteed to graduate, they will not be...

Video emerged today of an armed man pulling his weapon to ward off two apparent attackers near the Magnificent Mile, just two days after widespread mob action prompted police to arrest 21 people in the area. The video, filmed from inside McDonald's at 10 East Chicago, shows two males attacking a middle-aged man who appears to be a security guard. The man is slammed against the restaurant’s outside wall by the pair who punch and grapple the older man as he works to free himself.

A mixture of surprise, anger and disappointment from City Council members Wednesday in the wake of a Chicago Sun-Times report stating longtime Ald. Danny Solis wore a wire to assist the federal investigation into Ald. Ed Burke. The story sent shock waves through Wednesday’s City Council meeting, at which Solis was noticeably absent. The 25th Ward alderman, who is not seeking re-election, is reported to have recorded more than a dozen conversations with Burke over the last two years. Like Burke, Solis has been a powerful, longtime alderman. He is the former head of the Hispanic Democratic organization and longtime...

CHICAGO (CBS) — He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November. It’s still not known if the guns that were found in November were discovered at Burke’s ward office or at City Hall, but it’s hard to miss the irony of a staunch gun control advocate having to turn over 23 guns as a condition of his bond. From outlawing cell phone cases shaped like guns to bans on concealed weapons...

Seven people have been shot during one attack on Friday night on the South Side, Chicago police said. The shooting happened about 8:05 p.m. in the 1600 block of West 65th Street in the West Englewood neighborhood, said Officer Norma Pelayo, who was citing preliminary information. Further details were not immediately available. Other Friday shootings left a 27-year-old man fatally wounded and three others wounded. A “young male’’ between the ages of 15 and 17 shot himself in the head following a foot pursuit with police in the West Side’s Lawndale neighborhood, according to Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. It...

llinois is like Venezuela now, a fiscally broken state that has lost its will to live, although for the moment, we still have enough toilet paper. But before we run out of the essentials, let's finally admit that after decade upon decade of taxing and spending and borrowing, Illinois has finally run out of other people's money. Those "other people" include taxpayers who've abandoned the state. And now Illinois faces doomsday. So as the politicians meet in Springfield this week for another round of posturing and gesturing and blaming, we need a plan. And here it is:

Tonight’s episode of Chicago Med was an hour-long attack on the Second Amendment and concealed carry. The episode opens when a hero high school algebra teacher takes down a would-be mass shooter at a local movie theater, a la the Aurora Theater shooting. But before you get too excited, the episode’s title was “Mistaken.” There was never any chance Dick Wolf, the man behind the notoriously liberal Law and Order franchise, would allow one of his shows to portray private gun owners as heroes. They are always made to look reckless and trigger-happy, which is how liberals view anyone carrying...

President Obama’s own US Attorney in Chicago has created a report that demonstrates how terrible the gang murder situation in president’s hometown on his watch. Tanja Babitch of WLS Television in Chicago reports: U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon offered a sobering report on gangs and violent crime in Chicago. He said murders are up 20 percent in the city for the year. It's an alarming trend that affects younger victims over what have previously been petty disagreements. Shootings are now being fueled by trash talk, and social media spats. The problem is aggravated by the city's many gangs that are splintering...

On July 7, Father Michael Pfleger, the Coalition for Safe Communities in Chicago, and other gun control plaintiffs filed a lawsuit suggesting gun control is a “civil right” that is violated by a lack of gun laws and regulations in the Chicago-area villages of Riverdale, Lyons and Lincolnwood. The suit claims that “20 percent of guns” found at Chicago crime scenes between 2009 and 2013 were guns legally purchased from gun shops in these villages. Therefore, the suit posits a need for more regulatory oversight of gun stores in Riverdale, Lyons, and Lincolnwood.

In the wake of the outlaw biker shootout in Waco, Texas, where nine bikers were killed, the law blog Chicago Now suggested all gun owners should have to pass a test and get a license—which is what potential gun owners are also required to do in Chicago. The license Chicago gun owners get is a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card. By the way, 49 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend.

A gun pointed at his gut, the off-duty sheriff's sergeant digs through his pockets with his left hand, fumbling for money, as the three robbers surround him at the Far South Side gas station. The sergeant is surer with his right hand, quickly drawing his own gun and firing point-blank. The gunman, 16, drops at his feet as the two others scatter, according to surveillance video that captured the robbery Monday night at a Citgo station at 103rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, across the street from Gately Stadium. The sergeant swings around at the fleeing robbers, then points the...

The latest case of black-mob violence in Chicago is far from the worst. We’ll get to that one in a minute. But when a mob of black people rushed into three Chicago-area Sports Authority stores this week and rushed out dragging entire racks of winter clothing, the local CBS affiliate dubbed that “unbelievable.” CNN said the videos were “shocking.” Not really: “That crime was only unbelievable or shocking to the reporters who spend all their time ignoring and denying black mob violence,” said one Chicago cop, who would rather keep his job than be identified as a source of stories...

What's a Schakowsky Republican you ask? Good question.... Probably not much different than many "Chicago Republicans." If you are any bit familiar with the Chicago machine, it is no secret that the Chicago GOP that does exist, along with the state Republican Party itself, is heavily influenced by democrats and democrat operatives. But it looks like one of their operatives got a little sloppy in this year's 2nd Ward Republican Committeeman race. A citizen journalist sends us the following: Mirlinda Vula Feierstein, Candidate for 2nd Ward Republican Committeeman sure has an interesting campaign strategy. In late January, concerned citizens of...

A homeless convict was ordered held without bail Tuesday for allegedly beating and sodomizing a Schiller Park man with a tree branch in Grant Park. Cortez Foster is accused of beating the 65-year-old victim so bad late Friday, he remains intubated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital with severe head trauma, eye and nose fractures and brain swelling, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Morgan Creppel said. Doctors had to remove the tree branch, 7 inches long, 1/2 inch in diameter, from the victim’s rectum, Creppel said. The two men did not know each other but they were “interacting” before the beating in...

Lisa Leiter talks with UIC finance professor Robert Chirinko about the chances of Caterpillar leaving Illinois and what impact that would have on the state.

Only Chicago lost population. Congratulations to Mayor Daley and the whole Democratic party machine who caused a net loss of 200,000 people.

A 26-year-old man sitting on a porch in the city's Englewood neighborhood was fatally shot during a robbery Wednesday night, authorities said. -- Lloyd was sitting on his porch when another man approached and demanded money, a cell phone and drugs, said Chicago Police spokesman Officer David Banks. Lloyd handed over money and his cell phone, but the robber shot him anyway, with the bullet striking his right forearm and then travelling into his body at his right armpit, Banks said.

A deputy U.S. marshal has been convicted in Chicago of leaking secret information to the mob about a protected witness in a federal organized crime investigation.

So the Chicago Way hauled off and slapped the U.S. Senate in the face—one of those backhands with the knuckles to unsuspecting lips—and guess who blinked? It wasn't Chicago. It was the Senate. Get used to it, America. And it won't be the last time either. Roland "Tombstone" Burris, the amiable Illinois Democratic political hack who is being called eminently qualified by the national Democrats—perhaps because he's from Illinois and he hasn't been indicted—has almost reached his goal of being addressed as "Yes, sir, Senator." Now Tombstone has President-elect Barack Obama behind him, muscling Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid in...

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted public competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General. That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted. In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators...