Free Republic

Former President Obama said Monday that Congress needs to pass voting rights legislation before the 2022 midterm elections, or American democracy could be at risk. "We can't wait until the next election because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about Jan. 6, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we're going to have real problems in terms of our democracy long-term," said Obama. Speaking on a call with grassroots supporters alongside former Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama said debate over the voting rights bill, known as the For the People Act, was worth...

Oprah Winfrey says President Donald Trump's victory has her rethinking whether she could be elected to the White House. Winfrey, a Hillary Clinton supporter, spoke with financier David Rubenstein in December for an interview for his Bloomberg Television show, which premiered this week. Winfrey says before Trump's election she thought that she didn't have the necessary government experience to run the country but now she thinks differently. The billionaire businessman had never before held public office before his election victory in November. Winfrey also touched on her 25 years hosting a syndicated talk show. She says her ultimate purpose of...

A Chicago man has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of nine-year-old Tyshanw Lee, who police say was lured from a playground and killed execution-style because of his father's gang affiliation. Dwright Boone-Doty, 22, was charged on Monday night in the November slaying death of the child. He is also facing additional counts of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in an October shooting that left a 19-year-old woman dead. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says Boone-Doty was being held on unrelated gun charges when investigations linked him with Tyshawn's death, describing his role in the shooting...

Of everything I've read surrounding Jason Collins, the NBA center who came out publicly as gay Monday, this column by The Chicago Tribune's Steve Rosenbloom is by far the most disgraceful piece of yellow journalism I've come across yet. Nothing blossoms the left's fascist streak faster than their own sense of puffed up sanctimony, and it is pretty obvious Collins's decision to come out has Rosenbloom puffed up in nine different ways. In a Tuesday column, Rosenbloom publicly "outed" Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs for having the gall to not express an opinion on the Collins episode. Apparently, a number...

Dana Milbank: Future Scholars Will Be Shocked By Number of F-bombs Dropped By This White House By Noel Sheppard Created 03/10/2013 - 1:45pm The Washington Post's Dana Milbank made an interesting observation Sunday about the vulgarity prominent in the current presidential administration. Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, Milbank said, "The number of F-bombs being dropped by this White House, scholars are going to look in the national archives in 20 or 30 years and they're going to be shocked by the language that was coming out of this place" (video follows with transcript and commentary): HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Is there...

The Jackson file... Ensconced in the safety of their home in Washington, D.C., former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, former Ald. Sandi Jackson, are struggling to make ends meet before their sentencing in June. To wit: The shattered couple, who recently pleaded guilty to felonies, could lose their law licenses. They are desperately trying to pay the bills and figure out a financial plan for their two children. Although writing a memoir is on the table if Jackson Jr. can find a publisher (or publish it himself), Sneed is told their major financial support now is Triple J’s...

Worried transit officials asked lawmakers to imagine a CTA train packed with inebriated, possibly irate fans after a Cubs night game, then consider the wisdom of adding gun-toting passengers to the potentially volatile mix. Or what if a thief grabbed a bus rider's iPhone — a not-uncommon crime — and an armed commuter tried to stop the criminal? Those scenarios were raised Friday by Chicago transit officials, who called on state legislators to prohibit anyone from carrying a weapon on buses and trains if a concealed-carry law is adopted in Illinois. Transit agencies across the state contend that allowing individuals...

Federal officials filed charges Friday against Jesse Jackson Jr. after the former congressman reportedly signed a plea deal for allegedly improperly spending hundreds of thousands in campaign funds. The paperwork was filed at the U.S District Courthouse in Washington. Jackson, who left the public eye last summer for treatment of bi-polar disorder and resigned from office in November, is not expected to make an appearance, but he offered a response in his first statement to the public in months.

AP/WJLA) A 15-year-old majorette who performed with the King College Prep High School band in President Obama's recent inaugural parade was shot to death in Chicago. Police say Hadiya Pendleton was shot Tuesday afternoon in a South Side park. She died at a city hospital. Pendleton was standing under a canopy during heavy rain with her volleyball team when a man jumped a fence, ran toward the group and started shooting. Another teenage boy was shot in the leg. No arrests have been made. Pendleton's godfather says she was an excellent student and had dreams of being a doctor or...

Chicago’s illustrious Police Chief, Superintendent or SuperNintendo (whichever you wish to call him) got on a local radio station in Chicago and told it like he perceives it. He said that citizens licensed to carry could be, and indeed predicted they would be shot by Chicago Police Officers.

An Oak Brook doctor who was stabbed in the neck and face during an attempted holdup at a Gold Coast restaurant in November is suing his alleged attacker along with the restaurant and hotel that houses it. Mir Shah says he was violently attacked and stabbed several times by Jimmy Harris in the bathroom of the Westin’s The Grill on the Alley on Nov. 17, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court. The restaurant’s bartender was also injured when he chased Harris, who cut him with a knife, police said.

The body of a fetus was found this morning in a trash can on the Far South Side in the city's Princeton Park neighborhood. The fetus was discovered about 9 a.m. in a garbage can located on the 200 block of West 94th Street, according to a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Congressmen: Jackson Jr. suffering tremendouslyAssociated Press 3:54 p.m. CST, November 24, 2012 **SNIP** After Saturday's service, Davis and Rush said they have not seen Jackson and don't know where he is. But they said they understand why he has not yet spoken publicly about his resignation. "He can't take the pressure," Rush said. Rush said when he and Davis visited with Jackson a few weeks ago, the 47-year-old son of a civil rights icon broke down in tears several times. They said they don't want others to see him that way. "He's suffering under a tremendous, tremendous toil," Rush said....

Police are searching for six men who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl after forcing her at gunpoint into a car as she walked to school in the Lawndale neighborhood, officials said.

The successful business leaders that sit on the Chicago Board of Education must have checked their brains at the door when they went into the negotiating room with the teachers union. How else could they possibly negotiate a contract that the school district can’t possibly afford? Truth be told, if board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels operated that way, they’d be out of business. But, alas, this is government. They strike deals with unions and figure out how taxpayers will fund it later. Reuters tells us: “Chicago public school teachers returned to their classrooms on Wednesday but thorny questions remained...

This Wednesday, I reported that the media were falsely reporting that Chick-fil-A had decided to cease donations to “anti-gay” groups. Scores of so-called reputable news outlets like the Los Angeles Times and ABC News ran headlines declaring that Chick-fil-A had changed its policy toward giving to anti-gay groups. Yesterday, Chick-fil-A set the record straight, saying that their corporate giving has been “mischaracterized” and calling out “events from Chicago this week that have once again resulted in questions around our giving”: A part of our corporate commitment is to be responsible stewards of all that God has entrusted to us. Because...

“Gay” media organizations and the mainstream press have headlined over the last two days Chick-fil-A’s “change” that they claim means the company suddenly is promising not to discriminate against homosexuals – and that it would stop giving money to those organizations that promote traditional marriage. But it appears the facts are that the company’s anti-discrimination policy remains just as it was months ago .. and its donations appear to have had no new directive applied. It was a statement from The Civil Rights Agenda that prompted the recent headlines. The statement said of the Cathy family’s foundation, the WinShape Foundation,...

Nineteen people were shot across the South and West sides from Thursday evening through early Friday morning -- 13 of them wounded over a 30-minute period, authorities say. The overnight shootings peaked between 9:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. That's when eight people, many of them teens, were shot at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m. Then two men were wounded in the Ida B. Wells / Darrow Homes complex at about 9:25 p.m., police said. The men, 27 and 33, were shot in the 600 block of East 37th Street and taken to the University of Chicago Hospitals,...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:When television reporter Brian Ross erroneously reported that the Colorado "Batman" shooter was a Tea Party member, Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, said, "Our mission is to tell people everything we can that is relevant about a person who has just committed a terrible crime. If, in the course of our sweeping everything we can about the person, part of it turns out that he was a member of a particular club, a member of a particular organization, he has a particular hobby, if we judge that it is journalistically relevant to a profile, a rich profile...

Shooting at Family Research Council headquarters Posted by Anne Sorock    Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 12:21pm Will media rush to judgment? At approximately 11:35 a.m. eastern Casey Mattox of the Family Research Council tweeted that there had been a shooting at their headquarters in downtown DC. While few details are known, Mattox reports that a guard was shot.Mattox reported that they were “on lockdown” on the 5th floor, and later made it outside. Mattox tweeted a photo a few minutes later, at 10:48 a.m. eastern:A statement was released on the FRC Blog: Incident at FRC Headquarters Family Research...