Free Republic

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...

Protesters claim Northwestern Memorial Hospital refuses organ transplants to undocumented immigrants. August 11, 2013 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Dozens of people march to Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Sunday, claiming they refuse to add undocumented immigrants to organ transplant lists.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin is facing a firestorm of criticism after sending letters to hundreds of organizations trying to find out the depth of their relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council. The senator’s interest in ALEC is based on the stand your ground legislation that has become a focal point for liberal activists and lawmakers after the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. But his hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, editorialized that the inquiries looked like “Durbin’s enemies list.” In the August 6 letter sent to think tanks and corporations, Durbin wrote, “I am seeking clarification whether organizations that...

Forty to 50 House Republicans will support immigration reform, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) predicted Thursday. Gutiérrez said many of the Republicans supportive of immigration reform don’t want to be identified, but he insisted they would support comprehensive immigration reform. “If they ask me today, go find those 40 to 50 Republicans, I’ll tell them I found them. I know where they’re at,” Gutiérrez said in an interview with Ed O’Keefe at The Washington Post.

Larry Grathwohl, who had just come back to Cincinnati from Vietnam, was infiltrating the domestic terrorist group Weatherman, the only one to have done so. Larry saved potentially hundreds of lives when he alerted the FBI to a bomb placed near a Detroit police station and a restaurant. Bill Ayers, Education Secretary of Weatherman, told him that in the revolution, lives would have to be sacrificed. ... My interest in Bill Ayers began a few years ago when I learned about his career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education.” In reality he was working to destroy everything that was good...

The identity of a priest, who appeared at an accident scene, is a mystery. Illinois rescue crews spent the first 45 minutes after the accident trying to get a 19-year-year old girl out of a car. They were running out of options when a priest came out of nowhere, even though the road was blocked for miles, WEWS-TV reported. "I went back and talked to the priest and told him we were worried she would think we'd given up hope. He said 'I just want to anoint her' and so we just let him come up to the scene," New...

NEW YORK – Chicago, America’s third largest city, could follow Detroit into bankruptcy, warned Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the city’s “Annual Financial Analysis 2013” released last week. “Until we pass meaningful pension reforms in Springfield, the outlook for future years is unsustainable,” Emanuel concluded bluntly, anticipating a current budget crisis that could develop into a full-fledged budget meltdown within the next four years.Emanuel noted that Chicago’s current budget deficit of $338.7 million is expected to grow to $1.6 billion by 2016, due largely “to ballooning obligations under current pension legislation.”Compounding the fact that pensions for public employees are less than...