Free Republic

How far is Sweden’s Kvistrum Bridge from my room at the University of Chicago Hospital Center for Care and Discovery? You can see by the photo there are men salmon fishing upstream from that bridge. Isn’t that enough? Does it matter how far it is? Or who is in the water? They’re human. They’re men. That’s enough. They seem to be fishing for sport, not for meat. Tight lines, boys! I can’t even get my mind around the distance now. An eternity. An impossibility. For me the middle of the night isn’t the time of measuring distances, thinking of schedules,...

Chicago Tribune columnist, John Kass, who was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, made a two-part horrible mistake that’s already costing him. He spoke the truth about Liberal-run cities and pointed out that many of the prosecutors have run their election campaigns with the backing of George Soros. He wrote an op-ed titled “Something Grows in the Big Cities Run by Democrats: an Overwhelming Sense of Lawlessness,” and the backlash began in earnest. The Progressive Liberals in typical fashion started howling for him to apologize. He starkly refused, opining that the cancel culture uses a “left-handed broom”...

I feel a deep regret in missing even one game of the World Series to watch the Republican presidential candidates' debate. It's painful, like being ambushed by Tolkien's dwarfs and pummeled in the nether regions, and now it really, really hurts. Because the last thing I needed in all the world was to see a guy named Bush talk about tax cuts while referencing his own wet lips. "Look, the -- the deal is already done," Jeb Bush, once the bright star of the establishment GOP, now fading badly, said in the Republican debate the other night. "The biggest tax...

President Barack Obama made nice to the nation's police chiefs assembled in his political hometown of Chicago on Tuesday. He talked of how he wanted to make things easier for America's cops to do their jobs. But he wouldn't say three magic words that every cop wanted to hear: Mandatory minimum sentencing. That means mandatory jail time for thugs who carry guns illegally. "It is true that in some cities, including here in my hometown of Chicago, gun violence and homicides have spiked — and in some cases they've spiked significantly," the president said. "But the fact is, is that...

WASHINGTON — When White House chief pastry chef Bill Yosses left the executive mansion last summer, the president publicly mourned the loss of “the crust master’s” mysteriously addictive pies. And when the first family’s personal chef and pal, Sam Kass, left in December, Michelle Obama heaped praise on Kass’ “extraordinary legacy of progress” in an official White House statement. But the recent exit of head florist Laura Dowling, who’d been in the job since 2009, has been a much quieter affair. So hush-hush, in fact, that most outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. knew nothing about it. There’s still no official...

There were plenty of winners and losers in this week's Chicago city elections, and you can always follow the losers by the echoes of their shrieks through the alleys. And there are famous names of Chicago Democratic politics among them, names like Berrios and Mell and Daley and Preckwinkle. We'll get to them. The biggest loser of all, of course, is Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He was forced into a runoff campaign with Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, and given the unrest in the wards and Emanuel's huge likability deficit, it's looking as if he could be a loser in...

Chicago really doesn't need a presidential temple of worship masquerading as a presidential library, or a fancy downtown college basketball palace, or a Star Wars museum on the lakefront. And downtown doesn't need a big casino, either, not even a glitzy one with monstrous video billboards depicting the giant, pitiless eyes of the mayor staring down at those from the neighborhoods who dared to look up. Downtown has been getting quite a bit of attention, and though it might be nice to have all these things, (or not) — they aren't vital to the future of Chicago. But there is...

Kass is departing at the end of the month to move to New York and closer to his new bride, MSNBC host Alex Wagner, the White House announced on Monday. Sam Kass, the first family’s personal chef and head of Michelle Obama's Let’s Move initiative, is leaving the White House. Kass is leaving at the end of the month to move to New York - closer to his new bride, MSNBC host Alex Wagner, the White House announced on Monday. Kass, 34, is a longtime friend of the Obamas.

In an early scene on "Madam Secretary" — a kinda Hillary Clinton political soap opera on CBS — our heroine mucks horse manure out of a barn. As played by Tea Leoni, Madam Secretary is a former CIA-analyst-turned-professor in the Virginia horse country, in jeans and boots. She holds a pitchfork in her hand. And bits of straw and road apples cling to the tines. She's asked: Why clean up horse poop? "Why?" asks Madam Secretary. "I like it. It relaxes me." Just then the president of the United States (Keith "I'm Easy" Carradine) rolls up the dusty road in...

If you're an Illinoisan who isn't on a political payroll — meaning you won't have a fat six-figure pension like many of our public officials — you'll likely spend this last month before the Illinois governor's election in deep contemplation. Democratic incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn and businessman Bruce Rauner, the Republican, are in a daily knife fight, but if you're wise, you might also spend this time asking yourself these eternal questions: •Since I don't have a government pension, what kind of sauce will I put on my dry dog food to make it tasty when I'm old? •Would bottled...

August 30, 2014 Obama Attends Wedding of Longtime Personal Chef To MSNBC Host POCANTICO HILLS, N.Y. - President Barack Obama set aside the pressures of the world's trouble spots on Saturday to assume the role of spectator for something more joyous: the wedding of the Obama family's longtime chef and friend. Chef Sam Kass and MSNBC host Alex Wagner were tying the knot in an evening ceremony at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a farm-to-table restaurant in Pocantico Hills, just north of New York City. Obama and Kass have a close relationship, which Obama highlighted earlier this month by spending...

Antonio Smith, 9 years old, was assassinated the other day. He was Chicago's youngest fatal shooting victim this year. He was shot at least four times and fell in a backyard on the South Side. And when I went out there on 71st and Woodlawn less than 24 hours after he was murdered, here's what I didn't see: I didn't see protesters waving their hands in the air for network TV cameras. I didn't see the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson playing their usual roles in the political race card game.

President Obama went back to his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard Tuesday evening following less than 48 hours in Washington, leaving people puzzled over why he came back in the first place. Obama’s two days in Washington were mostly quiet, and concluded with the president receiving his daily national security briefing in the morning, and joining Vice President Biden to huddle with members of his economic team in the afternoon. Administration officials have insisted for weeks that the president just wanted to return to the White House for a series of meetings, but the explanation was met with a healthy dose...

Until further notice, there will be no more photographs of Lady M taking “selfies” by the official White House photographer. Thanks Republicans! How serious is this government shutdown? Dead serious: A lot of people immediately assumed that because some of Lady M’s ladies-in-waiting had been furloughed, she couldn’t even be bothered to tweet her own Tweets. That is not the case at all, it just so happens that since we’ll be operating with a “skeletal” staff around here, Lady M will be busy with other nonessential chores.  Thanks to the heartless Republicans who don’t care anything about how the...

Big Guy had a busy week. First, declaring that he had no intention of negotiating with GOP terrorists like Ted Cruz, who were threatening to burn the house down, and secondly, declaring his intent to negotiate with Hassan Rouhani, the new, moderate, political, philosophical and spiritual leader of the Republic of Nuclear Iran. Butt Lady M was equally busy entertaining the spouses/domestic partners of world leaders who were gathered in New York for the annual United Nations pow-wow. Lady M enjoyed showcasing the “talents” of the other spouses for a change, instead of her own Instead of the usual, bland...

Dogged by scandal, and with his press secretary presumably now curled up in the fetal position and breathing into a brown paper bag, it's obvious President Barack Obama is in need. Our president must find his happy place again, away from irritating controversies. Like Benghazi, where four Americans died and he stood before the United Nations and made a phony reference to a ridiculous video in order to save his politics at the expense of the truth. And now it's known that his Internal Revenue Service was used to threaten conservative and tea party groups and quash political dissent. The...

Politics is by nature a brutalizing business. It is a business of ambition and lies. Stay around it too long, and your heart becomes coarsened. It thickens and gets numb. It happens to cops, from years of listening to predators rationalizing why they did what they did. And it happens to reporters too. When I was deep in it at Chicago's City Hall, when I could feel the heart inside me sneering, I'd sneak away to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. It was quiet and there were no speeches, no political predators barking about their reasons, when the true...

Does U.S. Rep.Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Bud Light, have any skin left on his teeth? He sure does have nice teeth. Straight and smiley political teeth. Teeth with ample surface area so a politician could grow enough skin on them to help him escape disaster. But there can't possibly be any skin there, not on the front two, now that Raghuveer Nayak, his former fundraiser, BFF and the midwife to Triple J's U.S. Senate dreams was arrested and hauled into federal court Wednesday.

Mitt Romney isn't exactly my cup of tea, and loyal readers know this. But my readers are quite civilized and know that tea is served properly with silver spoons. Not wooden spoons. And not earthenware spoons fit for turnips and onions. But silver spoons. Order afternoon tea at any fine hotel and you will see that they bring you silver spoons. The silver spoon is for stirring, lightly, without clanking against the wall of the thin china cup. It is not a battle-ax to dismember your enemy, leaving his bones and meat upon the ground as you make speeches about...

He'll be around 67 years old when he leaves prison, old and gray and without prospects, but you wouldn't know it from his defiant goodbye speech, with the groupies chanting "Free our governor!" and lumps forming in the throats of some broadcast journalists who should know better.