Free Republic

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has decided to install veteran cop Eddie Johnson as the city's interim police superintendent while rejecting the three finalists the Chicago Police Board sent him, according to four sources familiar with the process. It remained unclear whether Emanuel will seek to hand the top cop job to Johnson permanently, but his move to circumvent the three candidates presented to him from the Police Board's national search for a new police superintendent came among heightened pressure from black and Latino aldermen to make the hire from within the department. Johnson, a prominent African-American who currently serves as chief...

The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plan to cut future retirement benefits and boost employee contributions for Chicago city workers, undercutting a pillar of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s strategy to stabilize one of the nation’s most troubled pension systems.

When "polar vortex," "below zero" and "rapid weather change" have become integrated into the vocabulary of every Chicagoan, it's snow wonder why: In 2015, the Chicago region saw its first population decline in more than two decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday. The Windy City's drop-off also was higher than any metropolitan area in the U.S. People are giving Chicago and Illinois the cold shoulder and migrating to states such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada, where they can enjoy warmer and much less moody climates. Can you blame them? Imagine lying poolside in the sunshine and not...

Ten U.S. states still have not regained all the jobs they lost in the Great Recession, even after six and a half years of recovery, while many more have seen only modest gains. […] Wyoming had 3 percent fewer jobs last month than it did in December 2007, when the recession began, the Labor Department said Friday. That is the biggest percentage decline among the states. Alabama's job total trails its pre-recession level by 2.7 percent, followed by New Mexico, where job totals are 2.6 percent lower. Some larger states are also still behind. New Jersey has nearly 1 percent...

The gun used in the shooting of three Chicago police officers last week has been linked to a former Chicago officer who later joined a police force in the northern suburbs, the Tribune has learned. Chicago police now are trying to figure out how the gun — originally purchased by a man who until Friday was a Lake County sheriff's deputy — ended up in the hands of 29-year-old Lamar Harris, a convicted felon with dozens of arrests who was killed in the shootout with police. Multiple law enforcement sources confirmed that authorities investigating the shooting have traced the weapon...

Black residents of Chicago are leaving for cities like Atlanta in massive numbers—away from the waves of crime tearing apart their hometown. ___ William Lee describes the crime and poverty driving black residents away from Chicago, where he lives in the South Side neighborhood of South Shore. According to Lee, "a multitude of black residents have called it quits with their hometown, searching for safety and prosperity beyond the city limits — my own friends and family among them." Lee adds: "It's been a humbling experience watching as those worlds, those communities filled with stable families and businesses, crumble into...

Chicago Brown: Navy makes something positive out of Chicago violence Mark Brown This is a good news story, but underlying it is a bleak reality. The volume of gunshot wounds and other trauma cases treated at Stroger Hospital is so high that the U.S. Navy has teamed up the past two years with the hospital’s prestigious trauma unit to keep its medical personnel better prepared for their next deployment. The Navy guys might see as much action in a typical night at Stroger as they would if they were in a combat setting. Let that sink in for a minute....

Another man who alleges he was sexually abused by former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert years ago as well as the sister of another alleged victim could testify at Hastert's upcoming sentencing on charges he paid hush money to cover up wrongdoing in his past, the Tribune has learned. For the first time, prosecutors and lawyers for Hastert revealed in an unannounced hearing Tuesday that the Illinois Republican had been accused of sexual abuse from when he was high school wrestling coach and teacher in Yorkville decades ago, according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by the Tribune. In...

The man suspected of shooting an off-duty Chicago cop earlier this week on the Far South Side is a paroled carjacker who allegedly confessed to the shooting, but claimed it was accidental, police officials said Wednesday.Samuel Harviley, 24, has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and robbery in the early Monday shooting of the officer, who was parking his car near his home in Washington Heights after work.Harviley and an accomplice walked up to the officer’s car and surprised him, police said. The 49-year-old officer offered to give up his wallet and cell phone.At one point,...

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee apologized to President Obama Tuesday for Donald Trump and some attendees cheering the end of his presidency at the group's policy conference.

Ted Cruz, the opportunist, shows up again. Instead of saying anything about radical Islamists, ISIS, need for better vetting and assimilation, or even praying for the victims —— He plays political games before the bodies are cold. He says “oh well isn’t it funny NATO HQ city was bombed and Trump yesterday said NATO expenses should be split more evenly, instead of US taxpayers shouldering all the financial burden. He ‪#‎lying‬ now when he said “Trump wants us to end NATO and withdraw from it”. The lies from this man are unreal. Trump explained the plan on CNN with Wolf...

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that Donald Trump was engaging in a "pre-emptive surrender" to Islamic terror by calling for a "withdrawal" from NATO on the eve of the Brussels terror attacks. On Monday, Trump told CNN that the U.S. should greatly reduce its support of NATO. "It's too much and frankly it's a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea," Trump said of the US-European security alliance. Cruz said he found it "striking" that the terror attacks occurred on the day after his rival candidate Donald Trump called for reducing the U.S....

Cruz: "It is striking that the day after Donald Trump called for America weakening NATO withdrawing from NATO we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamist terrorist attack."Cruz supporters: "How dare you say Cruz is blaming Trump for Brussels? Cruz said no such thing."

Hours after terrorist explosions in Brussels killed at least 31 people, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz proposed that law enforcement increase monitoring of Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. In a statement released by his campaign, Cruz wrote: "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." . . "I don't know whether this is true or not, but Cruz said we should start patrolling Muslim neighborhoods or something - is that true?" Kasich asked a group of reporters outside of a campaign stop in Minneapolis. He added: "In our country, we don't want...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday elaborated on a cryptic warning he issued to the Ricketts family in February, suggesting he would take ads out saying they're doing a "rotten job" with the Chicago Cubs. "I'll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it's not properly run or that they haven't done a good job in the brokerage business lately," Trump said in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board. Asked if he would launch those attack ads as the president, Trump responded, "No, not while I am president." In February, Trump via Twitter denounced a super...

Recently, when disrupters showed up at a Trump rally in Chicago, the first thing that came to mind was that America’s most notorious community organizer could be the wizard behind the curtain orchestrating what was being sold as an organic occurrence. In Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book Rules for Radicals, the late author could have been describing Obama’s last seven years in office when he wrote that an efficacious organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.”...

CHICAGO — By 25, Donnell Flora was a regular in the court system here. He had been convicted of shoplifting, found guilty twice in stolen property cases and sentenced to prison for drugs.But those past sins were minor compared with what officials said happened on April 28, 2014, when Mr. Flora gave his 14-year-old niece a gun she used to shoot two of her peers on the South Side. One of the girls, Endia Martin, 14, died from a gunshot wound to her back. The other victim, a 16-year-old, has recovered.On Monday, Mr. Flora, now 27, was sentenced to 100...

Corruption: Though she tries to ignore it, Hillary Clinton can’t escape her email problem. Almost every day brings more trouble for her. It’s time she did what a decent person would do — temporarily shelve her presidential campaign. While Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders in the delegate count, the former secretary of state is far behind everyone on the ethical score. She is consistently battered by news that reminds voters just how corrupt she is and now is facing a report that the FBI director is convinced she broke the law.

Bill Clinton is either losing it, or he’s ramping up his attacks on President Obama. Neither is good news for Hillary Clinton. During a speech in Spokane, Washington on Monday, Clinton seemed to tear down Obama to boost his wife. “Literally from the time I met her till we talked yesterday, she is the best change maker I have ever known. “She always finds a way to make something good happen, to make people feel empowered, to buy people into the process, to make democracy work the way the framer intended for it to work,” Clinton said. “Now, if you...

The Illinois Secretary of State’s Office has cancelled its annual Vehicle Show and Swap Meet due to the state budget impasse. The event, held in downtown Springfield near the capitol building, usually costs around $18,000 to put on, but is being postponed this year to save money. The show usually draws about 300 entries from car enthusiasts around the state and attracts more than 1-thousand people. The show has been around since 1949 and featured cars, trucks, motorcycles, hot rods, tractors and even recreational vehicles. A spokesman for the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office says it’s their hope the show...