Free Republic

Today, U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (OR-04) introduced the Wall Street Tax Act, legislation to create a new tax on financial transactions that would generate billions in revenue, while reducing speculative trading and volatility in the market. “High-frequency traders front-run the market and drive up prices for individuals, pension funds and other value investors,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio. “Some days high-frequency traders trade billions of shares that they sometimes hold for only seconds or less. They reap enormous financial benefits for themselves and their privileged elite investors but add no value to our economy. Congress needs to rein in excessive speculative...

Eight people were shot Monday in Chicago, including a 44-year-old man who was shot inside a vehicle in Chatham on the South Side. About 11:15 p.m., he was sitting in his parked car with another person when he was shot in the shoulder and twice in the back, Chicago police said. A man was wounded in a shooting in Woodlawn on the South Side. He was on the street about 6:45 p.m. in the 6100 block of South Rhodes Avenue when someone opened fire, striking him in the shoulder, police said. Minutes prior, a 19-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy...

I’m certainly hoping that newly elected Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch has the leadership skills, the wisdom, the guts and the character to help yank the state back from the economic abyss and promote legislation that will improve our quality of life. Does he? “A 2002 police report indicates that officers in west suburban Hillside were called to Welch’s home, where an ex-girlfriend told them that Welch slammed her head into a kitchen countertop numerous times after she called him ‘a loser.’ The woman did not press charges after talking it over with a relative of Welch’s.” “Welch also faced...

Just talked to Joe Scheidler. He's in hospital. Please pray. He sounds awful. now I hear multiple organ failure. Pray' pray, pray. (Rich Freeman is a longtime friend of Joe Scheidler, and he is also sick in the hospital, so prayers for Rich also are welcome)

A California man who police said claimed to be too afraid to fly due to COVID-19 hid out for three months in a secured area of O’Hare International Airport until his weekend arrest, prosecutors said Sunday. Aditya Singh, 36, is charged with felony criminal trespass to a restricted area of an airport and misdemeanor theft. In bond court Sunday, prosecutors said Singh arrived at O’Hare on a flight from Los Angeles on Oct. 19 and allegedly has lived in the airport’s security zone ever since, without detection.

...on Tuesday morning, when he went to sign in to the district platform, he was locked out. The same thing happened to other teachers who refused to go back as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) carried out the first part of her school reopening plan, despite fierce resistance from the Chicago Teachers Union. The school district is requiring all teachers in the tier that started offering in-person instruction on Monday to teach from their schools... ...It started disciplinary procedures early in the week on more than 140 employees for not reporting to schools in person and has withheld pay and...

At least 10 state health departments in the United States have detected the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of COVD-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, according to a new report. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in an update on Jan. 15, said that a “more highly transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2, B.1.1.7, has been detected in 10 U.S. states.” SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the coronavirus that is believed to have emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Health officials warned that models have shown the B.1.1.7 strain of the virus has the...

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the summer, was recently spotted drinking at a bar and posing for photos with apparent Proud Boys sympathizers after being released from jail on $2 million bond, prosecutors say. Now, prosecutors in the state have filed a motion to modify Rittenhouse's bond conditions. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide. He also faces charges of recklessly endangering the safety of two other victims and possessing...

On Twitter, Chambers identified herself as a “socialist.” “We have an entire private Airbnb house to ourselves,” she bragged in a post that showed her feet at the end of a lounge chair, with the pool and palm trees in the background. On Friday, it is predicted to be 35 degrees where her students live in Chicago, according to Weather.com. In another post, Chamber mugged for the camera from her towel with a caption that read, “Pool life.” WGN noted the CTU “is threatening the possibility of a strike if the district pushes ahead with plans to reopen school buildings.”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday that she wants to reopen bars and restaurants “as soon as possible.” Indoor dining has been banned since October in the state and new cases of the coronavirus, deaths, and positivity rates are on the decline, Block Club Chicago reported: All of those metrics remain significantly higher than they were in the summer, when indoor drinking and dining was allowed. For example, Chicago is seeing an average of 13 COVID-19 deaths per day as of Thursday, compared to two or three deaths per day in the summer.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is out of the leadership post he’s held for nearly four decades. On Jan. 13, 2021, state Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch was elected the new speaker of the Illinois House. On January 11, Madigan announced he was suspending his campaign for the position he’s held for nearly four decades after falling short of receiving the 60 votes needed to secure another term, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times. “As I have said many times in the past, I have always put the best interest of the House Democratic Caucus and our members first,” the statement continued....

Kyle Rittenhouse flashed a hand sign adopted by some white supremacist groups and was “loudly serenaded” with a song reportedly adopted by the far-right group the Proud Boys as the 18-year-old drank at a Wisconsin bar last week, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday. Kenosha County prosecutors asked a judge to modify the rules Rittenhouse has to follow while he’s free on $2 million bail as he awaits trial on murder and other charges for shooting three men, two of them fatally, with an AR-15-style rifle during chaotic protests Aug. 25.

The vote to impeach President Trump was approved by the House by a vote of 232 to 197, with 10 Republicans supporting the measure. The following House GOP members voted in favor of the move: Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (OH), Rep. Peter Meijer (MI), Rep. Fred Upton (MI), Rep. Liz Cheney (WY), Rep. John Katko (NY), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL), Rep. Tom Rice (SC), Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (WA), Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA), and Rep. David Valadao (CA).

CHICAGO -- Thirty-two people were shot and six killed so far in Chicago weekend gun violence. A 15-year-old girl was in critical condition Saturday after being shot on the South Side. She was riding in the back seat of a car about 5 p.m. in the 10300-block of South Halsted Street when someone unleashed gunfire, Chicago police said. The teen was struck in the head and taken to Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition, police said. Hours earlier, a woman was killed and another wounded in a shooting about a block away. A University of Chicago student is among the...

Kenosha gunman Kyle Rittenhouse was spotted in a Wisconsin bar with a beer — and a t-shirt with the slogan, “Free as F–k,” according to a report. The teenager, who is free on $2 million bond while he awaits trial on murder charges for killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and wounding a third, was photographed with his parents at a bar in Mount Pleasant, according to TMZ.

The professional fallout came quickly Thursday for a few Chicagoans who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in the nation’s capital that later devolved into chaos and violence. A city real estate agent was publicly fired after she posted to social media about attending the event. After workers at a tattoo shop posted about attending the rally, the shop was savaged on social media and was hit with graffiti accusing the store of employing “Nazis.” A Vietnamese restaurant, whose owners reportedly also attended the rally, was overwhelmed with negative online reviews.

A coalition representing Illinois law enforcement leadership and rank-and-file officers has issued a statement in opposition to House Bill 163 as amended that was unveiled earlier this week, saying: The so-called “reforms” that are part of House Bill 163 as amended would destroy law enforcement’s ability to keep communities safe. The authors of this legislation are not law enforcement professionals with hundreds of years of combined experience and this bill was drafted without law enforcement input, and because of that the long-term unintended consequences of this legislation would be dire. The Illinois Law Enforcement Coalition recently enumerated its Safe Communities...

A Black, transgender woman was found dead with a gun shot wound to the side of her head in Chicago, according to a local report and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Courtney "Eshay" Key, 25, was found dead Friday around 8:35 p.m. with an "open wound to the left side" of her head near 900 E. 82nd Street on the South Side of Chicago, according to a report from CBS Chicago. Key's family told the local outlet she was the victim of a hate crime, according to the news source. According to her family, Key had also been misgendered when...

When college professor Alec Klein learned that accusations of sexual harassment and bullying against him had gone public, he curled up in a fetal position in a darkened room in his home in Glencoe, Ill. “I understood there was nothing I could do about what was happening,” Klein, 53, writes in his new memoir, “Aftermath: When It Felt Like Life Was Over” (Fidelis Books), out now. “I was a realist. My life was destroyed … The pain was particularly excruciating because I wasn’t driven by things like money and glory; what I did mattered. It was who I was.”