Free Republic

Since the Supreme Court upheld the individual right to own guns last summer, one municipality with handgun bans after another has faced reality. Washington, which lost the case, changed its law. Morton Grove repealed its ban. So did Wilmette. Likewise for Evanston. Last week, Winnetka followed suit. Then there is Chicago, which is being sued for violating the 2nd Amendment but refuses to confront the possibility that what the Supreme Court said may apply to this side of the Appalachians. When it comes to firearms, Mayor Richard Daley is no slave to rationality. "Does this lead to everyone having a...

This Is Not The Machine You Are Looking For If you've read my Integrity Gap series on Barack Obama, or lengthier treatments like David Freddoso's book, you will be familiar with what was probably the most scandalously under-reported story of 2008, which is President-Elect Obama's deep and longstanding ties to machine politics in Illinois, most notably to the Daley machine in Chicago. You'll also recognize two other key themes: Obama's ties to politically well-connected housing interests ranging from slumlords like Tony Rezko to Beltway powerhouses like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ACORN, and Obama's practice of providing official favors...

On Anderson's Cooper 360 they did a major investigative look at the Ayers/Obama connection. They even interviewed Stanley Kurtz. Bottom line: Just a guy in my neighborhood? Served on one board together? CNN Says bulls**t! They worked closely with each other and worked together on TWO boards -- both Annenberg and the Woods Foundation. They also talked about Ayers little tea party to launch Obama and found Obama hadn't been entirely honest about "just stopping by..." It was an event they planned and hosted TOGETHER. Sarah Palin needs to come out tomorrow and ride this just like she did the...

Back in the early eighties, in an interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, Bill Ayers remembered his reaction upon learning that he would not be prosecuted by the government for his bombing spree as a member of the Weather Underground. “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted. Ayers is now a university professor, but he must have been exulting all over again after reading Saturday’s front-page story in the New York Times. The article explored the putative relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama during the time they worked together on the Chicago Annenberg...

Please copy, paste, and circulate this press release from the Governor of Missouri. Note the Web domain of the press release, governor.mo.gov. This is not "someone's blog," a "rumor," or a "smear." It is the official Web site of Missouri's state government. The Governor of Missouri says openly that Barack Obama conspired to misuse his state's law enforcement resources to "threaten and intimidate his critics."We cannot overemphasize the gravity of Governor Blunt's accusation. While we are not attorneys and cannot give legal advice, "Conspiracy against rights" is a felony under the U.S. Code, Title 18 (Crimes). At present, Governor Blunt's...

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...