Free Republic

Skokie Public Defender Sues To Be Able To Display Photo Holding Rifle Debra Gassman says preventing her from displaying the photograph is a violation of her First Amendment rights. After she returned from Israel, Gassman alleges she prominently displayed an 11-inch print of the photo in her shared office at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building at 26th Street and California Avenue in Chicago for 18 years without any issues.

I have written about the disastrous policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson for Chicago. As a native son, it is hard to watch this wonderful city undermined by Johnson and radical allies in the city council. Some initiatives like reparations and state-funded grocery stores will cost money but will not impose nearly the costs of Johnson’s dismal record on crime and taxes. However, this week saw a particularly confusing moment when, after calling the anti-crime program ShotSpotter “racist,” Johnson asked the company to extend its contract beyond the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So Johnson will put an end to this supposedly...

The sign outside Thornton Township's office in South Holland reads, "Welcome to Thornton Township. People working with people." But when residents showed up Tuesday night to speak at a public board meeting, they got anything but a warm welcome. "When I arrived there was security here," said Stephanie Wiedeman, a former township employee and frequent Henyard critic. "He was standing at the bottom of the stairs preventing anybody from going up to the boardroom. I asked him if the meeting was downstairs, he replied yes." Wiedeman and a handful of other residents wanted to speak directly to Supervisor Tiffany Henyard,...

Mayor Tiffany Henyard attends meetings dressed as a movie gangster and her residents say she plays the part – retaliating against them unless they do her bidding, The Post can reveal. Henyard channeled drug kingpin Nino Brown from the 1991 gangster movie “New Jack City” at a 2023 gathering, an ensemble meant to intimidate, her critics claimed this week. “People look at politics like a joke, it’s like a mockery right now because of all this stuff,” Village of Dolton Trustee Kiana Belcher told The Post. “She comes to board meetings dressed like Nino Brown.” -snip Lawrence Gardner, 57, told...

Financial turmoil continued to unfold in south suburban Dolton Thursday after a bank said the village failed to make a payment worth tens of thousands of dollars, which may result in police cruisers and other public works vehicles being repossessed. According to a letter dated Feb. 14, 2024, representatives from KS StateBank are threatening to take possession of more than a dozen village vehicles, which includes six police cruisers, after the village failed to make a payment of more than $76,000 on the vehicles’ loan some nine months ago. Lawyers for KS StateBank said in the letter, that the village...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal. In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing...

Barry Lee Whelpley died this weekend behind bars – while awaiting trial for the murder of a Naperville teenager more than 50 years ago. Now, the family of Julie Ann Hanson will never learn if a jury of his peers would have found Whelpley guilty of her murder. Two and a half years after his arrest, a trial date still has not been set. A series of setbacks and legal hurdles for prosecutors helped the case drag on – and now, it is a trial that will never happen. Four days after the Fourth of July in 1972, the 15-year-old...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) scrutinized language in the special counsel’s report, released Thursday, on President Biden’s retention of classified documents — including comments about the president’s age and memory. “I smell a rat,” Pritzker, one of the top surrogates in Biden’s reelection campaign, said during a press conference Friday. “It was extremely unfair for a [former President] Trump appointee, originally to the Department of Justice, to offer his own opinions about the mental acuity or age of the president of the United States,” he added. His defense of Biden comes after DOJ special counsel Robert Hur, who was tasked...

The headline is regarded as far worthier of condemnation than the fact that thousands in one city repeatedly celebrated the indiscriminate massacre and rape of men, women, and children.. Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” by Middle East expert Steven Stalinsky. While the usual corners of the political left, including President Biden himself, excoriated the article, no one has proven it to contain a single incorrect fact. Stalinsky outlined how, in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, the Detroit suburb erupted in pro-Hamas protests. At these,...

Mayor Tiffany Henyard (D) of Dolton, Illinois, got heated with officials Monday when they questioned her on issues that have brought a wave of criticism. Fox News reported Thursday that she was pelted with questions about her controversial spending habits and transparency. Dolton mayor to critics: ‘I’m the leader!’https://t.co/edgYdM3jLN — WGN TV News (@WGNNews) February 7, 2024 Video footage shows the meeting with Henyard speaking to fellow officials. She said, “Y’all should be ashamed of y’all selves. Y’all black. Y’all are black. And y’all sitting up here beating and attacking on a black woman that’s in power. You should be...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A would-be robbery victim with a concealed carry license got into a shootout with a suspect on the Far North Side early Tuesday morning. The 23-year-old man was walking in the 5400-block of North Winthrop Avenue in the city's Edgewater neighborhood just after 4:20 a.m., when a white sedan and dark-colored SUV approached, CPD said. A male suspect got out of one of the cars, pulled out a gun and demanded the man give him his belongings, police said. The victim, who has a Firearm Owners Identification card and CCL, also pulled out a gun, and there...

In recent weeks, it has become clear that the Biden-Harris regime is applying pressure to the Israeli government, in support of the Hamas-led terrorist cause in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government knows that it needs to continue to hammer Gaza without letup, as they continue to discover even more weapons caches, even more terrorist tunnels, even more evidence of military sites in civilian areas, virtually every day. If Israel pulls out before the job is done, then all these months will have been for naught. There are ten million Israeli citizens – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and more – all...

Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration received complaints about unsanitary and unsafe conditions at a Pilsen migrant shelter as early as late October, more than a month before the death of a 5-year-old boy focused attention on the state of the facility, emails recently obtained by WTTW News show. On Dec. 17, 2023, Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero died at Comer Children’s Hospital after falling ill at a migrant shelter in the 2200 block of South Halsted Avenue. Then on Dec. 19, several other individuals were taken to the hospital from that shelter with respiratory illnesses, according to the mayor’s office....

CHICAGO — A state representative from Chicago has introduced legislation that would prohibit police officers across Illinois from stopping motorists for a host of violations, including expired plates, tinted windows, improper lane usage, and even speeding up to 25 mph over the posted limit. Rep. Justin Slaughter (27th), chair of the state House Judiciary-Criminal Committee, introduced the bill on Monday. No other lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors. Slaughter’s legislation also states that any evidence of criminal wrongdoing discovered during a prohibited traffic stop cannot be used “in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding.” The evidence could not be used...

As Evanston prepares to become the first city in Illinois to implement ranked-choice voting in its 2025 municipal elections, the city is also set to revisit a proposed ordinance that would allow documented residents without U.S. citizenship to vote in local elections. Ald. Devon Reid (8th) introduced the ordinance at the Dec. 4 Rules Committee meeting. He said the change would increase voter turnout by allowing residents who are civically active to more fully participate in their community. “I believe it has been the march of our nation to allow more and more folks the right to vote in our...

Meeting on YouTube.

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois’ election board on Tuesday is scheduled to consider whether to keep Donald Trump on the state’s primary ballot after a recommendation that he be removed over the Constitution’s insurrection provision. The meeting of the Illinois State Board of Elections, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, comes a little more than a week before the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a similar case from Colorado. That state’s highest court found the 14th amendment barred the Republican former president from the ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S....

Every child in Illinois government schools will be subjected to intrusive “mental health” screenings and data-gathering schemes starting this fall under a controversial new state law, opening the door for further mass-medicalization and surveillance of children as well as huge profits for politicians’ Big Pharma campaign donors. Critics are sounding the alarm. The measure, adopted under the state’s Wellness Checks in Schools Program Act, is aimed at dealing with what policymakers describe as an explosion of “mental health” problems among children. The trends have been getting worse for years. But the government responses to COVID such as school shutdowns and...

Monday marked the five-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s online condemnation of a “hate crime” that never happened. On Jan. 29, 2019, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, made national headlines with claims a pair of white supremacist Trump supporters violently attacked him. The actor said his assailants screamed, “This is MAGA country!” in the apparently far-right city of Chicago. “I will never be the man this did not happen to,” Smollett told ABC News in an interview with Robin Roberts two weeks later. By December 2021, Smollett was convicted on five out of six charges over staging...

A hearing officer assigned to hear a challenge to President Joe Biden’s qualification to appear on the Illinois Democratic presidential primary ballot says the state’s elections board should dismiss the matter. The objection petition, filed by four Illinois voters, argued that President Biden does not qualify for the presidency under the terms of the 14th Amendment. The law disqualifies certain former public office holders from holding any subsequent federal or state office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States or “given aid or comfort” to the nation’s enemies. President Biden, the objectors argued, is guilty...