Free Republic

(Crain's) — New City Bank, the South Michigan Avenue lender for which indicted Cook County Commissioner William Beavers is vice chairman, was closed today by state banking regulators. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. couldn't find another bank to take on the assets and deposits, and instead will pay back depositors up to the $250,000 limit at which the FDIC insures deposits. New City had $72.4 million in deposits and $71.2 million in assets as of year-end 2011. The bank was launched in 2003 by a group of local investors, including Mr. Beavers, a South Side alderman at the time. Mr....

I have to admit while watching Tiger Woods' highly anticipated mea culpa last Friday, I quickly lost interest. It was evident Woods was reading from a script and his apology lacked sincerity. In fact, I wish Tiger had my number because I could have written a more believable speech for a fraction of the cost he must have paid some high priced pr firm who didn't really get the job done. The operative question is: What was Woods apologizing for? The answer to this question is simple. Woods couldn't come back to the PGA without some kind of admission of...

John Daly, the professional golfer, clad in a red golf shirt and brown soft twill pants, sauntered recently into the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa in western Pennsylvania to dedicate the opening of a state-of-the-art golf learning center. Nemacolin will host a sanctioned Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) tournament Sept. 15-21, to be known as The 84 Lumber Classic of Pennsylvania. The resort is owned by a building-supply company, 84 Lumber, ranked by Forbes as the 101st largest privately held company in the United States and one of chain-smoking Daly's main sponsors. The company is based in Eighty Four, Pa. Daly,...

Human rights groups praised the Cook County Board for joining Chicago in protecting transgendered people from discrimination. The move Tuesday added people acting or identifying themselves as members of the opposite sex to the list of groups protected from housing and job discrimination. One member voted "present." "We already had a human rights ordinance, so this just extended some of those same rights and protections to what can often be described as a gender variant community," said Chicago Democratic Commissioner Mike Quigley, one of the ordinance amendment's sponsors. Rick Garcia, political director of the advocacy group Equality Illinois, said the...