Free Republic

Anti-gun hysterics have a new spokesman: Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. I had barely finished writing about anxiety disorders over guns, and "His Honor" opens his mouth and makes my case. Mayor Daley was reacting to the Supreme Court decision striking down the D.C. gun ban, and the likelihood that a similar challenge will soon come against the Chicago ban. Now, some of his rhetoric is the same tired old stuff we've heard before; he called the high court's ruling a "frightening decision" and predicted a "return to the days of the Wild West." The Mayor should be so lucky...

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake. The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost. Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform. Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close—far closer than Obama has acknowledged—over oodles of foundation gifts on education...

Gov: Chicago may get troopers, National Guard By DON BABWIN | Associated Press Writer 5:14 PM CDT, July 16, 2008 CHICAGO - Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday raised the possibility of bringing in state troopers or even the Illinois National Guard to help Chicago combat a recent increase in violent crime -- an offer that Mayor Richard Daley didn't know was coming. Appearing at signing ceremony for a bill that toughens the penalty for adults who provide guns to minors, Blagojevich said "violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control." "I'm offering resources of the state to...

Politics produces a gap between words and deeds. Obama exaggerates the credit he deserves for a limited piece of ethics-reform legislation. He embellishes when he presents himslf as having a consistent record on the Iraq war when in fact he's done done a fair amount of zigzagging. He says it was the 1965 bloody attacks on civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, that inspired his parents to marry. They had been married for years already. He engages in doubletalk when, on free trade and Iraq, he tells the yokels one thing and the policy people another. He overstates when he...

Even though all the Founding Fathers pretended that they hated the media (which then meant newspapers and tract publishing) each of them had their very own newspaper supporters and nearly all paid for tracts that supported their viewpoints and policies to be published. These tracts and newspapers were usually subscription supported, but sometimes they were freely distributed. Flash forward to today in Chicago. Today, thanks to a law ushered in the back door right under everyone's noses, it is illegal to distribute free newspapers. Were the Founders alive today, Richard Daley, King of Chicago, would prevent them from distributing their...

Winning a city job or promotion isn't supposed to depend on your politics. But federal officials said Thursday that Al Sanchez, a top city commissioner and key leader in Mayor Daley's Hispanic Democratic Organization, made sure those spoils went to political foot soldiers. Al Sanchez is the former Commissioner of the Dept. of Streets and Sanitation. If they hadn't worked on a campaign, they were asked to ante up to political piggy banks. Others got jobs, funded by taxpayers, as a reward for taking care of Sanchez's lawn, shoveling his snow or working on his house, prosecutors alleged. This happened...

CHICAGO — Eighteen years ago, Richard M. Daley went into the family business, which is the business of being mayor of Chicago. Back then, he hardly could have imagined that he would become an accomplished practitioner of today's new wrinkle in public finance, here and elsewhere. He says his father, who died in 1976, would approve, but one wonders.

it's a Christmas tradition for the boss to give gifts to the workers. At Chicago's City Hall, the boss--Mayor Richard Daley--also gets a gift. A memorandum sent out last month on city stationery asks department heads and senior staffers to give a "$35 voluntary donation (no checks please)" toward a gift for the mayor and his wife, Maggie. The offering will be presented at the Daleys' annual holiday party for staffers to be held Friday at Kendall College. In past years, employees have given the Daleys gifts such as a saltwater aquarium and a piece of artwork from China. This...

(snip) Donald Tomczak, 71, formerly No. 2 in the city's Water Management Department, was sentenced to about four years in prison, ordered to forfeit $175,000 and fined another $15,000. Tomczak lost his more than $89,000 annual pension that he had accrued after 45 years. The onetime city official admitted to pocketing $400,000 in bribes and to taking part in corrupt hiring practices now under fire at City Hall (snip) Part of 'Old Chicago' system Tomczak also admitted he commanded a 250-strong army of water department employees who did political work for Mayor Daley, Al Gore, Rahm Emanuel and others in...

Security and terrorism won't be an issue if Chicago wins the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games because, by that time, there'll be a surveillance camera on every corner, Mayor Daley said Wednesday. "By the time 2016 [rolls around], we'll have more cameras than Washington, D.C. ... Our technology is more advanced than any other city in the world -- even compared to London -- dealing with our cameras and the sophistication of cameras and retro-fitting all the cameras downtown in new buildings, doing the CTA cameras," Daley said. "By 2016, I'll make you a bet. We'll have...

Federal investigators are zeroing in on why city officials hired young building inspectors, including the 19-year-old son of a top union official, as the federal Hired Truck probe continues to broaden... Agents want to know what role the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs played in getting a job for Andy Ryan, who was hired in 2004 when he was just 19, despite the city requiring all inspectors to have completed a four-year apprenticeship and have two years work experience. Ryan is the son of Tom Ryan, the secretary-treasurer of Carpenters Local 13. The union was Mayor Daley's largest campaign contributor...

July 28, 2005 — Mayor Daley is denying that he had any knowledge of a memo regarding the Hired Truck investigation that was improperly leaked to the city's Law Department and others. That memo contains the names of city employees who are cooperating with the government's investigation into City Hall corruption. Two big questions Thursday night: What, if anything, will U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also handled the highly publicized CIA leak case in Washington D.C., do about a leak in the City Hall corruption case in Chicago? And even if Mayor Daley didn't see the list, why would a...

In a move that amused some and worried others, the Cook County Republican Party announced yesterday a $10,000 reward to anyone who provides information leading to the indictment and conviction of Chicago’s Mayor Daley for political corruption. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Jim Walsh reports that Gary Sokien, the Cook County GOP chairman said in a statement, “The arrogance of Richard Daley is appalling...The corruption (in Chicago) is so pervasive, so extensive and has been going on so long that most of these insiders don’t even have a clue that their actions are illegal. We hope that this reward will...

More than 1,200 city workers--most in jobs that are supposed to be free from political influence--belong to a select few groups that have supported Mayor Richard Daley, a Tribune investigation has found. And most of those employees get their paychecks from City Hall departments targeted in a federal investigation of hiring. High-level mayoral allies including former top Daley aide Victor Reyes, Chicago Park District General Supt. Tim Mitchell, Chicago Housing Authority chief Terry Peterson, Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) and Ald. Patrick Levar (45th) have played key roles in the organizations.

Some Republicans don't think it's too early at all to start zeroing in on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). He'll be running for re-election in 2008 but he made a mistake last month that could be fatal. By comparing U.S. servicemen who run Gitmo to those who guarded the prison camps in Nazi Germany, the gulags in the USSR and the extermination centers in Cambodia under Pol Pot, the East St. Louis-born liberal hustler handed his opponents a battery of weapons to use against him. At least five anti-Durbin TV commercials come to mind. First, the tape of Durbin's outlandish attack...

Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. is making a political power play in his fight to get a new airport for Peotone. Jackson says if Mayor Daley will back the Peotone plan he may not run against Daley in the race for mayor. Congressman Jackson is in the mayor's face every time another City Hall corruption scandal breaks, and Jackson is definitely considering a challenge to Daley in 2007. But Jackson says his top priority is to get a new airport built near south suburban Peotone, and he considers Daley an impediment. So, the congressman is offering the mayor a strategy...

SPRINGFIELD - Senate Democrats on the Executive Committee hastily approved four gun-control measures Wednesday amid partisan rancor. Another Senate panel already had rejected much of the legislation, and some Republican senators repeatedly expressed disapproval at the work-around tactic. Senate Bills 1330, 1331 and 1332 were approved Wednesday even though the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected identical legislation earlier this session. Two of the Judiciary Committee's six Democrats are from downstate - Sens. James Clayborne of Belleville and Bill Haine of Alton - and both tend to vote against gun-control legislation. On the other hand, seven of the Executive Committee's eight Democrats...

NEWS RELEASE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms12500 N.E. Tenth PlaceBellevue, WA  98005CCRKBA BLASTS BLAGOJEVICH BIGOTRY TOWARD GUN OWNERS, PERSONAL PROTECTIONFor Immediate Release: March 25, 2005 Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has once again placed the Democratic Party's agenda of anti-gun bigotry ahead of the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms and defend themselves, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today. "A few days ago, Gov. Blagojevich announced that he would veto all pro-gun legislation that comes to his desk," said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron. "That includes...

http://www.nbc5.com/politics/4292331/detail.html?z=dp&dpswid=2265994&dppid=65193 I'm just including a link, since the website indicates that the material cannot be "published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."

Daley to ask for $250,000 for new program. Chicago public school teachers would be eligible to receive up to $7,500 toward a housing mortgage under a new program announced Tuesday. Mayor Richard Daley said he will ask the City Council to appropriate $250,000 for the program. Chicago Public Schools is expected to match that amount. An ordinance authorizing the program is expected to be introduced Wednesday in the City Council. The Teacher Homebuyer Assistance Program would provide grants of $7,500 to teachers buying homes in new mixed income developments intended to replace the Chicago Housing Authority’s low-income housing developments. Those...

This is an excellent website featuring Wes Oleszewski's great cartoons lampooning aviation, NASA, the FAA, airline companies, and Mayor Daley (or Snorkey as Wes calls him). He has a generally conservative bent and a rapier wit to go with a wickedly warped sense of humor. I heard about this website from a model rocketry discussion board and spent hours going through a huge backlog of his cartoons posted on the site. WARNING: A lot of the humor requires a good general knowledge of aviation and space topics to be really funny. Some require only a general contempt of bureaucracy.

Who's he talking about? Eric Zorn received a bunch of 'Z-Mail' in response to his claim that Patrick Daley, the woman-stealer, is going to Iraq to 'boost his political resume. Zorn sticks to his guns in his blog, but throws in this little nugget: And certainly, I'll say again, there's little evidence to suggest that the children of powerful Illinois politicians need to make grand, selfless gestures and achieve great things on their own before running for high office. Hmmm...who could he be talking about? Her? Him? Her? Him? Him?

Daley to Blagojevich: Reform school funding June 30, 2004 ASSOCIATED PRESS Mayor Richard Daley called on the governor Wednesday to start reforming the state's education funding system this year, saying its reliance on property taxes is taking too great a toll on homeowners. Property tax assessments have skyrocketed in several areas of the state, rising 30 percent or more this year in parts of Chicago. "Reforming the assessment system is only half the battle," Daley said. "Illinois relies far too much on property taxes to fund education and far too little on state sources of revenue." He urged Gov. Rod...

Hmmmmmmmm..........unusual for Mayor Daley to forego appearance with a Democratic candidate (for such a high office). Kerry spoke to a group including Je$$e Jack$on/Rainbow Push, in Chicago!?? This just reported via WLS radio here in Chicago, and the reporter who covered Kerry's speaking engagement also thought it was weird that Daley was a "no-show". The report went on to say that Daley DID issue a statement today, IN PRAISE of President Bush, saying that his accomplishments in Iraq cannot go unrecognized and that Bush has done a very admirable job, in Daley's opinion. The report said that Bush has been...

As same-sex marriages continue to be performed in the other parts of the country, Chicago activists plan to push the issue here. Alderman Dick Mell's daughter, Deborah Mell, was arrested on Thursday during a midday protest. She is also Governor Rod Blagojevich's sister-in-law. Mell, a lesbian, wants equal rights for same-sex couples. "I just feel like I want to do what I can, you know, and since I have this powerful family, we can talk about it and bring it out more," said Deborah Mell. "Because I feel that that is a way to publicize this whole situation." Mayor Richard...

Feb. 11 — AOPA's claim that the city of Chicago violated federal law and aviation regulations when it shut down Meigs Field last March has merit, says the FAA, and will be investigated. AOPA filed a formal complaint following the destruction of Meigs's runway on Mayor Richard M. Daley's order, claiming the city failed to provide adequate notice, as required by the FARs. The complaint will not result in the airport's reopening but can lead to the mayor and the city being punished for their actions. "AOPA intends to push for the appropriate penalty to be imposed on the city,"...

Three sisters, including one who flunked a teacher certification exam seven times, were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime to produce a set of Chicago public schoolteacher manuals that turned out to contain simple math errors and have since been scrapped, officials say. One of the sisters, Judith Branch-Boyd, turned a hallmark school reform effort into an overtime gravy train that helped boost her 2001-2002 pay to $164,400 -- the highest of any public school teacher in the state that year, records indicate. At the time, Branch-Boyd also supervised her two sisters, Toni Branch and Brenda Hambright, in...

Mayor Daley on Wednesday opened the door to contract set-asides for businesses owned by gays and lesbians--provided they can prove they were frozen out of city contracts because of past discrimination. Daley kept the volatile issue alive, one day after Chicago's first openly gay alderman took the first step toward a gay agenda that will start by extending ethics rules to the live-in partners of gay and lesbian city employees and could end with contract set-asides. "You have to look at it. You have to have an open mind. There's nothing wrong with that," the mayor said. Daley said he...

Veteran cop sees modern police methods failing May 5, 2003 BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Jimmy called. He wanted you to know that he's outraged. He's outraged by the killing of the children. He's more outraged that there's so little he can do to help. Jimmy is supposed to help. He's a Chicago cop, has been for more than 30 years. "Nothing else but a street cop," said Jimmy, "every day out on the street." But these days, Jimmy thinks he's the one wearing the handcuffs. "Nobody fears us anymore. Nobody respects us anymore," Jimmy said. "The police are now...

In a stunning move decried by critics as "the epitome of arrogance," Mayor Daley closed down Meigs Field by tearing up its only runway--without warning pilots, air traffic controllers or many of his political allies. A combative mayor said he was staving off possible terrorist attacks from the skies over the Loop, and that the quick action was necessary to avoid a protracted battle with Meigs supporters. But to those supporters, Daley's motivation was clear: For years he has wanted the 80 or so acres for a park, and now he's shamelessly using these anxious times as an excuse to...

I sat in disbelief as the news continued to report on the tragic occasion where 21 of my fellow Chicagoans lost their lives early Monday morning. What should have been a joyous Presidents' Day holiday was spent by many in Chicago's African-American neighborhoods as a day of mourning, a day of grief, and a day of asking why. The facts are these. For some time the owners of the club where the tragedy occurred have been under a court order to not operate the second floor of the their two-story restaurant/club facility. In spite of this, promoters, event organizers and...

How many traumatized children will it take? Evidently this is the question that the politicos in charge are willing to ask. Chicago has long been thought of as a classic political machine kind of town. Elected officials weighing the potential damage a specific set of circumstances or scenarios will exact before they are forced to make their change. For Mayor Daley of Chicago and his library commissioner Mary Dempsey the conflict here is becoming increasingly apparent. Chicago is the national home for the nationally acclaimed "Pedophiles are us" organization, otherwise known as, the American Library Association. The ALA is committed...

IL: Chicago Sun Times editor from the Murder City (Chicago) needs freepr Be nice in your responses, as she should hear from American Citizens from outside of the state of Illinois. We Freepr's who live in Illinois will provide our comments. Perhaps she does not know that the City of Chicago is the number one murder city two of the last three years. She has heard from me and my one quesiton is??? What is your self defense plan when the bad guy shows up at your door? Perhaps she does not understand this comment? We all need to keep...

Columnist Eric Zorn a Chicago Tribune writer runs a rhubarb patch in his weekly column that pits advocates supporting various social issues. * THIS WEEK : “CONCEAL CARRY IN ILLINOIS” * The following Rhubarb is between Mr. John Birch of www.Concealcarry.org (no relationship to the other John Birch) and Mr. Thomas Mannard, of Illinois Council against handgun violence. This exchange is Powerful and Enlighten. The fur fly’s as Mr. Birch of Concealed Carry tears into the myths shouted by Gun Control freaks. This is an lengthy but interesting read. Print it off and read it on the morning commute to...