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Pelosi endorses Rep. Jackson for reelectionBy Jordy Yager - 02/18/12 12:24 PM ET Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has endorsed Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), whose reelection bid has been plagued by an ethics investigation. Pelosi joins President Obama and several other top Democrats in their endorsement of the Chicago lawmaker as he goes up against former Democratic Rep. Debbie Halvorson (Ill.) in a fierce primary battle next month. Though Halvorson has raised only one-fifth the amount of money that Jackson has, she has waged a relentless campaign against the incumbent lawmaker, frequently pointing to the House Ethics Committee’s ongoing...

Link only..due to, This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2012 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/02/18/undocumented-migrant-named-to-illinois-dream-commission/#ixzz1mn5uFa6z

CHICAGO— Immigrant rights groups are calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to look at the arrest of a 54-year-old mother from Cameroon. Relatives say Rose Tchakounte was pulled over for not using her turn signal, driving through the South Side of Chicago Wednesday. Without any valid reason, activists say, police checked Tchakounte's immigration status. Because she'd missed an immigration hearing, due to an error by her lawyer, family members say 1st District Chicago police arrested her, eventually transferring her into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Rahm Emanuel does not plan to run for governor of Illinois. Not in 2014. Not ever. His proposal last week to register all Illinois handguns made it obvious. I'm sure that Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, wouldn't consider taking the step down to governor anyway — not any more than his predecessor, Richard M. Daley. You can be sure that Chicago mayors do see it as a demotion. Only one has ever stooped down to the Governor's Mansion and that was almost a century ago: ex-Mayor Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne served as governor from 1913-17. No wonder. Chicago mayors wield enormous...

The Chicago Teachers Union is asking for raises amounting to 30 percent over the next two years, the opening salvo in heated contract negotiations with school officials who are implementing a longer school day across Chicago Public Schools next school year. Documents obtained by the Tribune show that in the face of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's expansion of the school day, the union has led with an offer seeking a 24 percent raise in the 2012-13 school year and a 5 percent increase the following year, the net effect being 30 percent. It may be playing hardball, or it could be,...

The Chicago Teachers Union is asking for raises amounting to 30 percent over the next two years, the opening salvo in heated contract negotiations with school officials who are implementing a longer school day across Chicago Public Schools next school year. Documents obtained by the Tribune show that in the face of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's expansion of the school day, the union has led with an offer seeking a 24 percent raise in the 2012-13 school year and a 5 percent increase the following year, the net effect being 30 percent.

ROCKFORD (WIFR) -- Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a man tried to break into his ex-girlfriend's house last night--but instead of sweet nothings he got some gunshot wounds. 41-year-old Chauncey Williams tried to break into his ex-girlfriend's home around 10 pm Monday night. Instead of welcoming him inside, police say his ex shot at him from behind the front door. Multiple bullets hit him in the arm. Williams was let out of prison in August; he was locked up in 2006 for trying to do the same thing. He was supposed to serve a 10-year sentence, but got out...

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois already charges so-called sin taxes on smokes, booze and casino gambling. Now state lawmakers are thinking about imposing a $5 skin tax to get into strip clubs. Club owners are in an uproar, arguing that the tax might put smaller strip joints out of business and throw dancers, bartenders, bouncers and valet attendants out of work. They worry that some customers already are fed up with admission fees, let alone taxes on top. "We wouldn't want that," said Tiffany Winkler, manager of the Chicago club Pink Monkey.

Bunker Hill, IL - Macoupin County Board Chairman and candidate for State Senate in the 48th District Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) today called on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to drop a deeply unpopular proposal that would require gun owners to register their handguns and pay a fee or face felony charges. “I’m against it. Law-abiding gun owners are against it. And 48th District residents are against it,” Manar said of the proposal. “Downstate voters are fed up with Chicago dictating to us what they think is best.” Last week, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel demanded that the Illinois General Assembly require...

The program that issues mandatory ID cards to gun owners in Illinois would be discontinued under legislation proposed by state Sen. Sam McCann, R-Carlinville. Senate Bill 3340 would repeal the Firearms Owner’s Identification Act. McCann said the act prevents law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights under the Second Amendment. Residents must pay a $10 processing fee when they submit their FOID card application to the Illinois State Police. A FOID card lasts for 10 years. “It just punishes the law-abiding public,” McCann said, adding that the law doesn’t stop criminals from getting their hands on guns. McCann said his bill...

To understand President Barack Obama (D) it is necessary to understand where he comes from. And no, I'm not only referring to Hawaii, Indonesia, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, University of Chicago Law School and any other places he touched down on to his journey to the White House. All of the preceding were/are important in molding him of course and all have been analyzed in varying degrees of thoroughness. But one influential component of his life has been relatively neglected--the poisonous Chicago and Illinois political culture he jumped in to, participated in and took with him to Washington. Known...

When the Pioneer Zephyr — better known as the Silver Streak — made its historic run from Denver to Chicago in 1934, the diesel-powered passenger train now on display at the Museum of Science and Industry topped out at 112.5 miles per hour, which at the time was only slightly off the world land speed record. What then are we to make of Wednesday’s official Amtrak kickoff for its first “high speed rail” corridor outside the Northeast — on which trains traveling between Chicago and Kalamazoo, Mich., will now reach top speeds of 110 miles per hour? Bring back the...

A Downers Grove woman accused of blasting her boyfriend with a shotgun after an argument involving a dirty dish could be charged with attempted murder, prosecutors said Wednesday. DuPage County Judge Elizabeth Sexton set bail at $1 million for Vickie D. Podruzek, 43, who faces charges of aggravated domestic battery and aggravated battery with a firearm. Podruzek is accused of shooting her boyfriend with a .410-gauge shotgun about noon Sunday in their Carpenter Street home. Prosecutor Kirsten King said the victim suffered “four or five entry and exit wounds” to the neck and shoulders when he was shot at nearly...

CHICAGO (CBS) — A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country. He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country. University of Illinois professor Dick Simpson estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million. It’s essentially a corruption tax on citizens who bear the cost of bad behavior (police brutality, bogus contracts, bribes, theft and ghost pay-rolling to name a few) and the costs needed to prosecute it.

Illinois state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) has endorsed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to create a statewide gun registry in order to decrease gun violence, according to a news release issued Friday. Emanuel proposed requiring gun owners to register each handgun in their possession at a fee of $65 per gun. Currently, Chicago's gun control laws ban weapon sales in the city and prohibit people from taking guns out of their homes. For 28 years Chicago banned gun ownership entirely, until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that policy in June 2010. Prospective Illinois gun owners must obtain a firearm owner's...

n his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed how members of Congress enrich themselves and their relatives using earmarks and insider information. Now, the Washington Post, following in Schweizer’s footsteps, has conducted a study that found 16 members of Congress have used their power of the purse to benefit companies, colleges, and community groups tied to their relatives. *snip* Among those cited in the Washington Post report were the following (below):

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), spoke at CPAC on February 10th, he predicted that if Barack Obama wins a second term it will usher in an all-out attack on the Second Amendment. In so many words, he said the same people who brought us Fast and Furious, “a criminal enterprise” for which there has yet to be prosecutions, will use four more years to gut constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. And anyone who wonders what this assault on the Second Amendment might look like need look no further...

Some people collect stamps. Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), collects checks from governments that try to curtail citizens’ right to bear arms. Last week, he received a check for $399,950 signed by Chicago mayor and former President Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in payment for the cost of fighting the windy city’s handgun ban in Supreme Court case McDonald v. City of Chicago. But this is just a start. “They’re going to owe us money as well for Ezell v. Chicago (a suit over Chicago’s gun range restrictions) so this isn’t the first...

The owner of a soon-to-be-built strip club in the western suburb of Stone Park has this to say to a group of neighboring nuns who don’t like his plans: Mind your own business. “As a legal, tax-paying citizen of this community, we ask only to be judged fairly by what we have done and not through the recent religious fervor,” Bob Itzkow, the club’s owner, said in statement released Friday. “In reference to our non-tax-paying neighbors, we ask that you treat us as we have treated you, by not trying to unduly disturb us by imposing your religious beliefs on...

Lon wrote: The most striking thing about this column, and the comments that follow it, is the degree to which they highlight the lie that what differentiates the right and left is how much government they want. Ransom is outraged that a town is not telling a business where they can and cannot locate. (Oddly he is actually outraged at a nearby city that a town is not telling a business where it can locate, but he tends to have a special level of incoherence). Very few of the conservatives below even blink at the idea that government should interfere...

Video Linky Here It's one of the few politician-sponsored activities that should be free of controversy: a high school art contest. But an annual citywide competition to design the stickers affixed to every windshield in Chicago has suddenly become a public relations nightmare. The sticker, designed by 15-year-old Herbie Pulgar, depicts Chicago's famous skyline inside of a heart, with a backdrop of the city's blue and white flag. Extending up from the heart are four hands, and above them, symbols representing police officers, firefighters and paramedics.

An email from a TTAG reader who experienced a DGU at a Windy City train station has generated a lot of traffic and discussion. Here’s a comment from a Chi-town cop: “I’m glad that you were not harmed during your encounter on that “L” platform. Yes, CTA does have some very, very good video surveillance on their platforms, buses. Sad part is that if those 3 mutts had called the Police, we would have to check it (and you if still on the scene ) out. Don’t believe the BS that having a firearm in a fanny pack is having...

Twenty-One Republican Candidates Take Steps Toward ‘Young Gun' Status Washington- The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) today announced its newest round of ‘On the Radar' candidates. By reaching the second step of the four-step ‘Young Guns' program, these Republican candidates have reached the fundamental benchmarks to place them on the road to victory. Now, these 21 candidates are ready to take on the Democrat establishment and return fiscal sanity to Washington. "These candidates have worked hard to meet the benchmarks that have been laid out before them and are determined to hold Washington Democrats accountable this November," said NRCC Chairman...

Rahm Emanuel proposes $65 per-gun fee and registry BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com Updated: February 10, 2012 2:19AM Illinois handgun owners would be required to register their weapons with the state — and pay a $65-per-gun registration fee — under a mayoral plan proposed Thursday to arm police with the information they need to solve crimes and reduce illegal firearm transfers. --- It comes at a time when the National Rifle Association and its allies among Downstate lawmakers are making a major push for concealed carry legislation. Illinois is the only state in the nation that does not...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -Under a just passed law, Illinois SWAT units can now attach silencers to their weapons. The silencer is designed to give police special operations teams the advantage if they find themselves in a firefight . The sponsor of the measure, state senator Dave Koehler says if police have to enter a room and fire their weapons the silencer allows them to concentrate on their target. “Hearing loss of up to 15 seconds can make a big difference between whether hostages are killed or not.”

Earlier this month, the city of Chicago wrote a check for $399,950 to the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group located in Bellevue, Wash. The check was a reimbursement for legal fees the foundation incurred in the McDonald v. Chicago case, which resulted in the United States Supreme Court overturning the city’s ban on handguns. “The city lost that action,” said Julianne Versnel, the foundation’s director of operations. “

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants lawmakers to require that all handguns in Illinois be registered with the state, or gun owners could face felony charges. A statewide gun registry is key in helping solve Chicago crimes that involve handguns from outside the city, and would also help crack down on gun trafficking, Emanuel is expected to argue Thursday. Under Emanuel's proposal, handgun owners would have to pay $65 for a registration certificate from the state, which would function much like the title to a car. Illinois law currently requires that gun owners and shooters have a firearm owners identification card,...

PEORIA -- Caterpillar Inc. will not be building its new North American plant anywhere in the state of Illinois, officials with the company told local leaders Tuesday, with part of the reason being continued concerns about the business climate in the state. The company will instead focus on a location closer to its division headquarters in Cary, N.C., Peoria County officials were told in an email sent to them shortly after the close of business and later obtained by the Journal Star. The plant stood to bring with it from Japan roughly 1,000 jobs manufacturing track-type tractors and mini hydraulic...

Earlier this month, the city of Chicago wrote a check for $399,950 to the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group located in Bellevue, Wash. The check was a reimbursement for legal fees the foundation incurred in the McDonald v. Chicago case, which resulted in the United States Supreme Court overturning the city’s ban on handguns. “The city lost that action,” said Julianne Versnel, the foundation’s director of operations. “Because it was a constitutional civil rights case, the city was required to pay the cost.” Like all city checks, it’s signed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Comptroller Amer Ahmad. The...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is returning more than $200,000 in donations from the family of a fugitive casino magnate linked to violence and corruption in Mexico who has been seeking a pardon, Obama’s campaign confirmed on Tuesday. “More than 1.3 million Americans have donated to the campaign and we constantly review those contributions for any issues,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an email after a New York Times report on the decision appeared late on Monday. “On the basis of the questions that have been raised, we will return the contributions from these individuals and...

This just in from a member of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia: “As I begin to write this, not 20 minutes beforehand, I pulled my gun in self defense. For the second time in 4 months. In the gun free city of Chicago. I already know what you’re thinking, I’m not allowed to carry a gun in Chicago. Let’s get this out of the way, I have made the decision to conceal carry in Chicago. Yes this is stupid, but it has already been beneficial for me. Not once but twice. A little background, I’m a FF/Paramedic that lives in the downtown...

<p>Chicago - City Clerk Susana Mendoza is investigating whether gang signs are in the artwork of the new Chicago city sticker just days before the sticker is set to be printed.</p> <p>The sticker was picked as the winner in a city-wide contest and was designed by a 15-year-old boy who attends a school for troubled youth.</p>

Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign. The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials... one of Mr. Cardona’s brothers...

...Pfleger has also agreed to serve as the archdiocese's representative for "newly developing anti-violence initiatives that will include a particular focus on issues surrounding gun violence," the archdiocese said.

The House Ethics Committee may be probing a second allegation that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) broke House rules, according to the Chicago lawmaker. Jackson, speaking before the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board on Monday, vehemently denied any wrongdoing, saying that a campaign donor’s purchase of a plane ticket for a woman he had an extramarital affair with, though at his behest, did not break the chamber’s rules. “[It was] not a personal benefit to me, I don't believe, under the House rules. A benefit to the person for whom he bought the ticket. He didn't buy tickets for me. Did...

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation on Monday was a pretty happy camp, despite last Friday’s “first-round” loss in an Illinois court case that – if it advances all the way to the Supreme Court – could put an end to judicial semantics games over the right to keep and bear arms. That ruling is being appealed, and one might almost be compelled to thank the City of Chicago for paying its court-mandated legal reimbursement to SAF for the landmark Supreme Court case of McDonald v. City of Chicago. And the amount of that bill? How does $399,950 sound? “That is...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.— A gun-rights group has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal judge in Illinois ruled against allowing people to carry firearms on the street. The Second Amendment Foundation announced Monday it's appealing the decision by federal district Judge Sue Myerscough.

The Naperville nightclub squabble that ended with the fatal stabbing of a young teacher allegedly began when a well-regarded airport manager was ribbed for drinking his beer from a wineglass, authorities said.

WILLIAMSON CO. - Classes at John A. Logan College are helping people get the right to carry a concealed handgun in 30 different states. After the class, students are eligible to apply for a permit through the state of Utah. A step that's necessary until Illinois passes a concealed carry law. Illinois stands alone in its views on concealed carry. It's the only state in the country that doesn't allow it, but that's not stopping people from getting a concealed carry permit. "We travel quite a bit from state to state and sometimes you get in a position you'll feel...

Ann Liston and Eric Adelstein are hardened Chicago Democratic consultants. Their behind-the-scenes role helping the Wisconsin Democratic Party collect more than 1 million signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker has put them in a campaign unlike any they've ever seen. The two 40-somethings said Facebook's power to reach voters, combined with a recentU.S. Supreme Court ruling that unfettered limits on corporate and union political spending, has rewritten their industry's game plan. "It's horrible for democracy but great for business," Adelstein said Tuesday, referring to the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision. Voters in Wisconsin, South Carolina and Florida have been...

SNIPPET: "Chicago gangs are still spray-painting their graffiti on alley walls, train cars and viaducts — but they’re also using their smart phones and computers for “cyber-tagging,” according to the Chicago Crime Commission, which released an updated book on the city’s street gangs Thursday. They’re provoking their rivals with Internet graffiti and using social media to keep in touch with their associates, according to the commission. “They’re tagging websites with information that is provocative and incites violence,” said Jody Weis, former Chicago Police superintendent and president of the commission." SNIPPET: "Web chatter is a valuable tool for law enforcement officials...

Nothing would make me happier than seeing Occupiers rampaging in the streets of Chicago only six months before the November elections. (CNS News) — Adbusters, the radical, Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine, credited by many media outlets for launching the Occupy Wall Street protests, has put out an ad calling for 50,000 protestors to “Occupy” the G8 summit in May. And they are not calling for peaceful protest. The Adbusters ad shows a picture of policemen beating up a defenseless protestor, and comes with the caption: “In the Tradition of the Chicago 8.” The Chicago 8 were radicals who incited riots in...

Jorge Montiel fled to his hometown near Pachuca, Mexico, after he was alleged to have raped and murdered a Georgia housewife in October 2010. Federal agents tried to bring the international fugitive to justice, but something stood in the way: the cost. When the U.S. Justice Department called Forsyth County prosecutors to explain America's complex extradition process and to say the county would have to pay for translation and other fees, "the decision was made by Forsyth County to discontinue that effort," FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett told the Tribune. And with that, Montiel became just another of the thousands of...

President Obama’s two biggest “achievements” since taking office are the so-called stimulus and government-run healthcare. But neither one of those policies are popular, so the President largely ignored them during his state-of-the-union address and instead focused on using the tax code to promote “fairness.”But fairness doesn’t mean treating everyone equally by adopting a flat tax. Instead, it means a class-warfare policy of higher tax rates. The President’s home state of Illinois is a good test case of this approach. The politicians rammed through a big tax increase early last year, supposedly to stabilize state finances.Unfortunately, Obamanomics isn’t working very well...

The American Communist Party was born in Chicago in 1919 and headquartered there until 1927, when its headquarters and newspaper, the Daily Worker, moved to New York. In the 1930s, the Communist Party in Chicago reached its largest audience through organizing the unemployed and protesting evictions and cuts in relief. Black Belt organizers recruited protesters at Washington Park, while Communists in Back of the Yards built alliances with community activists like Roman Catholic bishop Bernard Sheil and Saul Alinsky. During the Popular Front of the late 1930s, Communism's popularity increased among artists, writers, and intellectuals. By the end of the...

Linette Kossow had just boarded the 36/Broadway bus in the Loop and was rifling through her bag for coupons when a man behind her reached over her shoulder, snatched her wallet and bolted out the rear door. “I was screaming as loud as I could, ‘Hey, stop him!’” Kossow was soon joined by a security guard and together they chased the man. “I grabbed him and said, ‘God wants you to give me back my wallet. Please give me back my wallet, I need it.’” But he slipped away and the chase continued -- soon joined by a homeless man....

Gov. Pat Quinn--following on President Barack Obama's Tuesday call to raise the dropout age--will ask the Illinois legislature next week to boost the age students have to stay in school from 17 to 18. "I like the fact that the president said kids have to stay in school until they are 18. Jobs follow brainpower. We have to understand that investing in education, including community colleges, is the key to a nimble economy," Quinn said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday morning. Quinn's office said in a Friday release he will propose hiking the drop-out age this year in his...

Earlier this week three anti-gun bills passed out of the Illinois House Rules Committee. These bills will now move to the full house where they can be voted on as early as next week. Please contact your state Representative today and urge him or her to protect your firearms freedoms. Encourage them to oppose HB 1294, HB 1599 and HB 1855! House Bill 1294 would ban most semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns. If this bill becomes law, it will also ban individual firearm parts as well as .50 caliber rifles and ammunition. House Bill 1599 would re-classify a litany of...

Across the river in Illinois, it's that time of year again--time for the push for extremist 'gun control' laws. Right on schedule, three were introduced yesterday. First, we have HB 1294. This bill would ban so-called "assault weapons," .50 caliber rifles and ammunition, and magazines capable of holding 11 or more rounds of ammunition. The ban extends to possessing, buying/selling, and manufacturing--so long to the tax revenue and good jobs provided by companies like Rock River Arms, Armalite, D.S Arms, and probably others. What's more, the law would be confiscatory: Provides that these provisions do not apply to a person...

More than 100 people filled the Oak Park council chambers Tuesday night for a public hearing on regulating private handguns after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the village’s handgun ban in 2010. The largely civil 90-minute event, technically a meeting of the Oak Park Health Board, saw handgun proponents outnumber pro-regulation speakers 15-7. Handgun proponents, many wearing “I-GOLD” logo of the Illinois Gun Owner’s Lobby Day event, argued that reasonable, responsible law-abiding adults could and should be trusted to handle lethal weapons for the purpose of self-defense. Regulation proponents argued that firearms are inherently dangerous, people are flawed and together...