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Spurred by the shooting of an off-duty police officer, a three-month joint investigation of a street gang faction ended this week with eight arrests in Summit and Chicago, along with the confiscation of guns, drugs -- and an alligator. After an arrest was made in December's shooting, authorities began an investigation into the Latin Kings gang faction the suspect belonged to, targeting drug sales in Summit and the Chicago Lawn police district on the Southwest Side, according to a CPD news release issued tonight.

Tonight (Feb. 8), Bruce Springsteen will receive the MusiCares’ 2013 Person of the Year award for his history of philanthropic and political works. In a new interview, Springsteen discuss his longtime commitment to activism, and how it has influenced his own work. Once unwilling to speak his mind on the issues of the day, Springsteen has now played an active role in the last three presidental elections. He finds performing at a political rally to be a different challenge than a sold-out arena, but possibly more rewarding. “I go to Ohio with Jay-Z,” he told Robert Santelli, the Executive Director...

I often write and talk about people selling their soul to the merchants of social justice in return for the cushiest life with the least amount of effort. The reason I put it in those terms is because such action goes against not only American DNA but also human nature. Humans at their most basic level are like any other living organism on the planet that want to procreate to keep the species moving along. Once that's been secured there are still instincts like competition and recreation that constitute life, even for domesticated animals. For humans the notion of not...

Forensic evidence compiled in the killing of Trayvon Martin supports George Zimmerman's claim that Martin was leaning over him when he fired his gun, but casts doubt on Zimmerman's timeline on the night he shot and killed the unarmed teen, according to a review by a forensic expert for Local 6. Michael Knox, a retired Jacksonville Sheriff's Office detective and crime scene investigator, published some of the findings in his book, "Intermediate Range: The Forensic Evidence in the Killing of Trayvon Martin" (available through Amazon.com here). Knox and Local 6 calculated the exact moment Zimmerman slammed shut his door as...

I just finished up a trip to London. In previous posts, I’ve expressed pessimism about the future of the United Kingdom, largely because all political parties have a statist mentality.I criticized Gordon Brown, the former Labor Party Prime Minister, for being a compulsive redistributionist, big spender, and taxaholic.But nothing’s really changed under Tory leadership. David Cameron is a vacuous statist, undermining the Conservative Party in the same way that George W. Bush eroded the brand name capital of the Republican Party.This sign was on a train I rode today. It is sponsored by the UK version of the IRS,  and...

DETROIT — In one of the most violent cities in the U.S., Detroit employees, even those entering some of the city's roughest neighborhoods on a daily basis, may not arm themselves while on the job, based on a 2010 order. Anthony Neely, a spokesman for Mayor Dave Bing, said the city has not yet determined if it will impose penalties — up to and including termination — against a 59-year-old Public Lighting employee who shot two teens he claimed were armed and attempting to rob him and his co-worker.

The fugitive ex-policeman Christopher Dorner, suspected of killing three people and injuring two, had a history of making complaints against fellow officers within the Los Angeles Police Department, and one officer said he had a reputation as a "hot head," according to internal affairs records. Dorner was accused of punching a recruit in the chest while he was in the Police Academy in 2006. That recruit, Abraham Schefres, was wearing a bulletproof vest and a trauma plate, when Dorner allegedly punched him. After being hit, he glared at Dorner, whom Schefres said responded as though he had made a mistake,...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is boasting that the negotiations he is conducting with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce regarding immigration reform are “going well.” The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which both represent labor, are trying to cajole the Chamber, which represents business, to come along with their plans for temporary workers. Trumka was confident that this time, unlike 2007 when talks failed because there was not enough common ground regarding temporary workers, things would go smoothly, saying, “I think they are going well. We have been working in good faith with the Chamber, and I continue...

The spin on the women's health issue could give you whiplash. Nationally and in my home state of New York, there's a whole lot of manipulation going on. The White House continues its unnecessary, perplexing attack on religious liberty in the United States. The administration's latest stance regarding the abortion-drug/contraception health-insurance mandate continues to violate the rights of religious employers who object to contributing to such things. That's why you see not only Catholics but also Protestants, among others, suing the federal government. Contrary to much of the media spin, this debate is not about access but freedom. During his...

Worth noting now since it’s potentially another sticking point between Rubio and the rest of the Gang of Eight who desperately need him to sell immigration reform to the right. By now, everyone knows the main bone of contention between him and Schumer et al. Rubio wants the path to citizenship implemented only after border enforcement increases; Democrats want it implemented concurrently with — and independent of — the new security measures. (Both sides agree that probationary legal status will be granted immediately, though. Ahem.) Read the fine print on their proposals, though, and you’ll find another disagreement. Namely, once...

Newsmax Ben Carson: US Like Ancient Rome; Obama Not My Target Friday, February 8, 2013 10:05 PM World-renown pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson told conservative radio and television host Armstrong Williams on Friday that his attacks on the nation’s ills in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this week were not directed at President Barack Obama. In his first interview since upstaging the president at the event on Thursday, Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said his comments were “directed at the situation that is going on in our nation and how we can...

The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that it would really just be oh so very helpful if all of the states would voluntarily comply with their proffered Medicaid expansion deal; ObamaCare really needs everybody to cooperate in order to work properly, so it’s really most unfortunate for them that the Supreme Court ruled last June that states were within their rights to decline the expansions without the threat of the total loss of federal Medicaid funding being held over their heads.It was something of a boon to the Obama administration when Republican governors John Kasich in Ohio and...

Chicago’s murder rate is far worse now than it was during the city’s most notorious crime era, Al Capone’s “gangland,” when gun-control laws hardly existed, ABC reports. Leading up to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, there were 26 killings in January 1929. Yet, 42 people were killed in Chicago last month, catching the attention of Chicagoans, the White House and politicians nationwide. If the current murder rate continues, February 2013 will far exceed February 1929, when there were 26 killings, including the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/4/chicago-murder-rate-far-worse-strict-gun-control/#ixzz2KPWwdfKo Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Mali has been a hotbed of Islamic extremism of late, as al Qaeda operatives have taken the West African nation by storm. As the country deals with an influx of violence, a presidential election is slated for this year — and there’s a fascinating candidate running for office. Yeah Samake, 42, a Mormon who was born and raised in Mali, is hoping to win the presidency and to save his homeland from the grips of extremism. Samake is currently one of the top candidates in the race — a democratic election that was pushed off last year after extremist activity...

Senate Democrats are digging in against Republican calls for deeper spending cuts by bringing out some of their favorite punching bags: corporate jets, Wall Street and Big Oil. With the automatic budget cuts in the sequester coming up next month, Democrats hope to vote on an alternative plan to raise taxes on some of their favorite boogeymen in hopes of shifting the blame when the GOP inevitably rejects it. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray of Washington, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland met Thursday to...

There was a time, not long ago, when both Republicans and Democrats agreed that something had to be done about entitlement spending — especially spending on the elderly. But no longer. • Although he promised in his first run for the presidency to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Barack Obama seems increasingly unwilling to do any of that now. • The leftwing of the Democratic Party seems increasingly shrill in its insistence that there is no need for any fundamental reform of entitlement spending.• Even in the left-of-center think tanks and on the liberal blogs, one finds increasing denial...

Italy lost 700,000 Italians in World War I, and then immediately voted in Mussolini's fascists, which militarized the whole of Italian society. If you wonder why Italians cheat on their taxes today, it's because they have 25 centuries of experience with nasty tyrants like Mussolini. Well, Mussolini gambled and went to war on Hitler's side, and Italy lost another half million people in WW II. Make it a round 1.3 million Italians dead from very, very bad gambles -- not to mention all the non-Italians they killed. What is astonishing is that Italy, having been punished twice in the 20th...

A homicidal fugitive former police officer, who has declared “war” on his former colleagues, claimed he was the victim of racism while serving in the Los Angeles police department. An unprecedented manhunt has been launched across California, Nevada, Arizona and northern Mexico, for Christopher Dorner, 33, a 19-stone former US Navy reserve lieutenant and American football college running back. Dorner, a trained marksman, is already suspected of killing three people, including one police officer, in a series of shootings that began last weekend.

Staring at a another debt ceiling crisis, the president's punishing the one credit rating agency that dared downgrade U.S. debt in the last crisis. And Wall Street analysts say the timing's no coincidence. Just weeks away from the next debt-limit showdown, the Justice Department filed a whopping $5 billion lawsuit against Standard & Poor's for alleged fraud. The case appears weak, but the message it sends S&P and the other independent rating agencies is clear: Don't downgrade anymore. "It's a foregone conclusion that no more downgrades will be coming," said Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff. Curiously, Attorney General Eric...

(Editor's note: The following Letter to the Editor, published in the Jan. 23 edition, has gone viral on the Web after a reader linked it to a Fox News Facebook page. It had received more than 4,000 comments and been shared more than 12,000 times by Tuesday morning.) Beaufort, N.C. Jan. 17, 2013 TO THE EDITOR: Republicans and “so-called” conservatives are at it again. They are claiming that the Constitution gives people the right to have guns without the permission of the government. If that were true, then how could New York and Chicago have laws against it? We Democrats...