Free Republic

Fiscal Policy: A city teetering on the brink of insolvency passes a minimum wage that would reach $13 by 2019, higher than the minimum elsewhere in a state that just elected a Republican governor. What could go wrong? Ignoring the first rule of holes (when you're in one, stop digging), the Chicago City Council, in a Tuesday emergency session called by Mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, voted 44-5 to raise the city's minimum wage from the current statewide level of $8.25 an hour to $10 on July 1, with future increases bringing it to $13...

Voter Fraud: As early voting begins in the Land of Lincoln, President Obama casts his ballot and a Republican state senator voting for himself finds that his ballot was counted for his opponent. Eric Holder, call your office. The day after resigning as attorney General, Eric Holder told the Congressional Black Caucus that the voter ID laws he and his Justice Department opposed were answers to a problem that "doesn't exist." Yet when President Obama left the golf course Monday to vote early in his home state of Illinois, he was asked to present his ID before casting his ballot....

More Guns, Less Crime: Since Illinois began issuing concealed-carry permits this year, robberies, burglaries, car thefts and, yes, even murder, are down significantly. Last month, when an 86-year-old Crestwood, Ill., man decided to visit his local phone store, he arrived to find a robbery underway. After staying outside to keep others from entering the store, he saw the suspect fleeing through a back door. He pursued the suspect, legal firearm in hand, stopped him, then held him until police arrived to make the arrest. The actions of the unidentified law-abiding citizen were made possible by Illinois becoming the 50th and...

Malignant Neglect: The president talks about Ferguson, Mo., but not about a Chicago weekend where three dozen people were shot, seven of them killed, including a 16-year-old black girl who wanted to be a doctor. To his credit, President Obama was more judicious than usual talking about the shooting of Michael Brown outside St. Louis. He did not say the police acted stupidly. He actually made a rare attempt at acknowledging individual responsibility when he said that when young black men "commit a crime, they need to be prosecuted, because every community has an interest in public safety." One of...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- Former Illinois U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is serving the end of his 2-1/2-year sentence in a Montgomery federal prison, wants presidential pardons issued to all offenders who have served their time, according to a fellow inmate. Weeks after contacting Jackson inquiring about his ideas for prison reform, AL.com received emails from Jackson as well as a copy of a nine-page letter outlining his plan written by John P. Karoly Jr., an inmate Jackson knew during his stint at Butner Federal Prison in North Carolina. Jackson told AL.com he wrote two books while incarcerated, "The Tao...

In a previously unpublicized transcript from 2004, the Illinois State Senate specifically linked then US Senator-Elect Barack Obama with corrupt politician and Rod Blagojevich ally Emil Jones Jr. More than simply connecting the two, the transcript specifically calls Jones Mr. Obama's "mentor" and his "political godfather." The transcript was written on November 8, 2004, soon after Mr. Obama was elected to the United States Senate. Ironically, the subject of the section in which the soon-to-be Senator was linked to Jones was written in praise of Mr. Obama. The quote comes from Senate Resolution 716, which was in place to congratulate...

Tuesday night, activists in Chicago were interviewed shortly after the President delivered the State of the Union address, offering their perspective and feedback on what the President had to say. Rebel Pundit has released video of those reactions, including remarks from J.R. Fleming of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, Joe Watkins, Founder of V.O.T.E. (Voices of the Ex-Offender), and Mark Carter, of V.O.T.E., among other activists. Mark Carter commented, “We’d be better of with you cutting off your presidency right now. Just quit.” Obama’s blame game is not selling, with Fleming saying “the reason why our economy is dying is because...

Hardball: Hell hath no fury like an administration embarrassed by a top credit-rating agency stating the obvious — that its perilous spending policies and rising debts warranted a downgrade just like any poorly run business. Speaking at a fundraiser in Philadelphia on June 13, 2008, candidate Barack Obama said of his Republican opposition: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." In this case, in August 2011, Standard & Poor's brought an embarrassing downgrading of U.S. debt to AA+ from AAA in advance of the president's re-election bid, the first such reduction in U.S. history. In...

<p>The Obama's younger dog is still getting used to the spotlight as it made a major faux pas during a White House ceremony Wednesday afternoon.</p> <p>Sunny Obama jumped up on a toddler who was a guest at the unveiling of the official Christmas decorations, pushing the little girl to the ground.</p>

The District of Columbia’s insurance commissioner says he was fired after questioning President Obama’s plan to fix ObamaCare and saying the city might not follow his suggestions. Commissioner William White told The Washington Post on Saturday that he was called into Mayor Vincent Gray’s office the prior day and told the Democratic mayor “wants to go in a different direction.” -snip- City officials have not commented on the situation, saying they cannot discuss personnel issues.

Fiscal Disaster: A major credit rating agency has just given Chicago, with more general obligation debt per capita than Detroit, its second triple-notch downgrade in six months. Its bonds are perilously close to junk status. Citing skyrocketing pension costs and a lack of meaningful solutions, Fitch Ratings lowered Chicago's debt to A- from AA- last week, making it the second serious downgrade since July. The move by Fitch follows a triple downgrade of Chicago's bond rating by Moody's Investors in mid-July. Moody's cited the city's "very large and growing" pension liabilities and "significant" debt service payments, among other factors. The...

Former Illinois Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., once one of the most promising black politicians in the United States, reported to federal prison on Monday to begin serving a 2-1/2 year sentence for misusing campaign funds, according to a family spokeswoman. Jackson, a former Democratic representative and the son of civil rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., entered a federal correctional facility in Butner, North Carolina, family spokeswoman Bunnie Jackson-Ransom said in a statement. "I am happy to report that he is in good spirits, all things considered," said North Carolina Representative G.K. Butterfield, who accompanied Jackson to the prison,...

If Rufus McDonald were white, you'd already know his name, and he'd be on the path to pushing George Zimmerman aside as the most hated man in America. But because he is black, you probably have never heard of him, unless you live in Chicago. You see, Mr. McDonald was cleaning out an attic and discovered some papers. As Kim Janssen of the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday: Hidden in a dusty trunk in an abandoned and looted Englewood home, the papers of Harvard's first black graduate, Richard T. Greener, had long been thought lost to history. (snip) Several museums and...

The chief of the International Monetary Fund [IMF] says the U.S. government’s stalemate over spending and its debt limit is “very, very concerning” and could roll back economic progress around the world. Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing. “And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue,” she said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They found out that the government...

Gun Crime: FBI statistics show Chicago, with one-third the population, passing New York City in the number of murders in 2012. Is it time for a national conversation about gang control vs. gun control? President Obama doesn't often mention his hometown when he talks about gun control. Then he'd have to explain, in arguably the most gun-restricted big city in America in the last state to allow concealed carry of firearms, why Chicago is now officially the murder capital of the United States. In new statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012,...

At least eight people are dead and more than 25 others were wounded in shootings over Labor Day weekend in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago. The shootings were widespread, from the far south and west sides of the city and spanning north into neighborhoods that see far fewer shooting incidents normally.

Stand Your Ground: A big hypocrite in the IRS scandal targeting Tea Party groups sets his sights on a conservative think tank, asking its suspected supporters: "Are you now or have you ever been a conservative?" Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is on a witch hunt that threatens anew the free speech rights of Americans who don't hold his views or those of the Obama administration. This time he has targeted the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of state legislators who promote free markets, limited government and federalism, ahead of a "stand your ground" hearing Durbin announced after George...

Cities: Chicago appears to be following Detroit's lead to financial disaster, perhaps the latest victim of decades of one-party rule by Democrats eager to redistribute wealth while driving real wealth creators out of cities. Moody's Investors Service downgraded the Windy City's credit rating by three notches last week, partly the result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt, leaving Chicago's lower than 90% of Moody's public finance ratings. Among the nation's five largest cities, Chicago has put aside the smallest portion of its looming pension obligations, according to a study issued this year by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The condition...

Exclusive: Erik Rush lists deaths some theorize have nexus to 'treasonous' president I know it’s typical for those on the political left to demand peer-reviewed studies, videotape and signed affidavits proving the assertions some of us make concerning the machinations of the Obama administration and socialist encroachment at large, but we all are aware by now that this is a diversion. It’s also a good indicator that we’re correct in said assertions. Like the left’s tendency for projection, wherein they accuse the opposition of that in which they are themselves engaged, it’s a fairly transparent ruse. That said, the available...

Guns: Illinois has become the last state in the union to allow citizens their full Second Amendment rights, and officials in the murder capital of America worry about the consequences of citizens defending themselves. Illinois' legislature on Tuesday voted to let gun owners carry concealed weapons. The action followed a violent and bloody Fourth of July weekend in President Obama's hometown during which 74 people were shot and 12 were killed. Permission for concealed carry in Illinois was prompted by a ruling late last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. It found that...