Free Republic

Still Winning This week the President signed a new trade deal with Mexico, Canada, and Argentina, a deal far more favorable to our interests than the now discarded NAFTA deal. In the same time frame, our master negotiator hosted the first trilateral meeting with Japan and India, which should also boost the economy and which includes defense and military purchases. Merry Christmas, Xi. Comey: Still a Loser On the home front, Mueller and Comey keep looking worse and worse. Previously, former FBI Director James Comey refused to answer 100 questions when he testified before Congress because the hearings were public....

Nearly 130 Chicago Public Schools employees, including 9 teachers, ousted over background check issues Juan Perez Jr. 5-6 minutes Nearly 130 Chicago Public Schools employees have been terminated, recommended for dismissal or simply resigned amid scrutiny following an enormous review of worker backgrounds prompted by a Tribune investigation this year. That group of employees includes nine teachers, 35 people classified as classroom aides and an unspecified number of people the district lists as substitute or hourly workers, according to CPS. In addition, 124 employees are still barred from work because they have not submitted fresh fingerprints for an updated district...

Solalinde accuses NGO of deceiving migrants; He says that he was deceived along with the Central American and Mexican migrants, the caravan brought polleros (human traffickers) and armed persons to the city. "Here the negative actor is the organization, Pueblo Sin Fronteras.", says Fr. Solalinde. There is no greater champion for Central American migrants; Alejandro Solalinde Guerra is a Mexican Catholic priest and human rights activist. He is the coordinator of the South Pacific Human Mobility Ministry of the Mexican Bishopric and director of "Hermanos en el Camino", a shelter that provides Central American migrants with humanitarian aid and education....

Illinois has long been a blue state, mainly because of the way Chicagoans lean. But if state Republicans had hopes of gaining, or even maintaining ground last Tuesday, their hopes were quickly quashed. Democrats ousted Republicans in the race for governor and in two key congressional districts, and the General Assembly locked in Democratic supermajorities in both houses. So where do Republicans in Illinois stand today, and what’s to come?

CHICAGO (AP) — Hall of Fame tight end and former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka is recovering from a mild heart attack. Steve Mandell, Ditka's agent, tells ESPN that doctors inserted a pacemaker. He says Ditka "is doing much better," and the iconic coach "appreciates the outpouring of support and expects to be home soon." The Bears wished Ditka "a speedy recovery" on Twitter.

As the Trump Dynasty stumbles into misrule and failure, how long before the first well-known journalist gets murdered? With the president designating the news media as “enemies of the people,” unstable personalities like pipe-bomb mailer Cesar Sayoc and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter have been shaken loose from their moorings. Imitators surely will follow. Not that there’s anything new about it. Soreheads have been menacing journalists since the invention of newspapers. Recently, a man in Mountain Home, Arkansas, was charged with terroristic threatening after repeated phone calls targeting CNN’s Don Lemon. I wondered if he was the same idiot who used...

Despite the capture of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the criminal group continues to export "wholesale" quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl through crossing points located along the Mexican-California border: AZ, NM, and W. Texas.... the Sinaloa cartel "maintains an international expansionary footprint" in comparison with other groups, says the Drug Control Administration (DEA) in its annual report on drug trafficking which was published this Friday. SINALOA- continues to export "wholesale" amounts of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl through crossing points located along the Mexican border .... These drugs are distributed in cities such as Chicago, Phoenix, Los...

It's bad enough that four people died in a mass shooting incident at Chicago's Mercy Hospital last Monday. In addition to the perp, "[t]he victims were identified as Dr. Tamara O'Neal and Chicago police officer Samuel Jimenez. A pharmaceutical assistant was also shot and killed." "He had a very, very pleasant personality," Maldonado said of Juan Lopez, noting that his internship lasted for about eight weeks in either 2016 or 2017. No written records of the internship? Alderman Maldonado goes for the Sgt. Schultz defense: "I know nothing!" The alderman said the city runs the internship program and that he...

Obama Speech at Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. Go to the 38-minute point.

Should we be allowing trained teachers in public schools to be armed in the event of a mass shooting? The debate continues in districts around the country, but in Illinois, at least for the time being, it’s over. The choice was put to a vote at the Illinois Association of School Boards and the idea of arming teachers was rejected. It was, however, at least a relatively close vote. A proposal to arm Illinois teachers with guns failed Saturday. Supporters of the move say it could keep students safe from school violence, but opponents say there has to be another...

Authorities were reporting multiple victims in an “active shooter” attack in the area of Mercy Hospital on the Near South Side that brought out a large police presence Monday afternoon. Emergency crews were called to near the hospital, 2525 S. Michigan Ave., about 3:20 p.m. There were “reports of multiple victims” in the attack, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a tweet. Fire officials called an emergency medical services Plan II, sending at least 10 ambulances to the scene, because of an “active shooter” situation, a Fire Department spokesman said. A hospital employee said she was in her office when...

The meeting between top Mexican federal police officers and the head of the violent Beltran-Leyva drug cartel took place at a quiet ranch in central Mexico. The officers, including then-Cmdr. Ivan Reyes Arzate, told the cartel leader of an informant in his operation who'd been arrested in Miami and was providing information to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, leading to the seizure of several boatloads of narcotics on the open seas, according to testimony Thursday in a federal courtroom in Chicago. The officers then identified the informant and handed his photo to an irate Arturo Beltran-Leyva. Within days, the informant...

A former Chicago police commander who earned praise for overseeing big reductions in violence in one of the city’s most historically dangerous districts has been charged with stealing more than $360,000 in Social Security funds in a scheme lasting more than 23 years. A one-page criminal information filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court accused Kenneth Johnson of bilking the Social Security Administration out of $363,064 from about June 1994 to November 2017. Although the charge does not contain any more details, sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Chicago Tribune that Johnson is accused of stealing benefits intended for...

Chicago Public Schools this fall recorded one of the sharpest single-year enrollment declines since the district’s student population began a steady downturn 16 years ago. The 361,314 students counted on the 20th day of classes this fall represents a reduction of 10,000 students from last school year. That’s a slightly smaller drop than two years ago, when enrollment plummeted by about 11,000 students from the preceding year. The numbers continue a long-standing trend that began in 2003, when total enrollment stood at 434,000. ... Years of falling enrollment, school expansion and choice patterns have left CPS with tens of thousands...

An international team of geoscientists from the United States, Canada and Europe has discovered a large impact crater beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in remote northwest Greenland. A paper on the discovery was published in the journal Science Advances. The Hiawatha impact crater is approximately 19.2 miles (31 km) wide and lies under an ice sheet that is 0.6 miles (1 km) thick.The scientists believe this crater was formed by a 0.6-mile wide iron asteroid that slammed into the Earth at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago. ..." “Researchers were looking at the map...

On a bright July day 2 years ago, Kurt Kjær was in a helicopter flying over northwest Greenland—an expanse of ice, sheer white and sparkling. Soon, his target came into view: Hiawatha Glacier, a slow-moving sheet of ice more than a kilometer thick. It advances on the Arctic Ocean not in a straight wall, but in a conspicuous semicircle, as though spilling out of a basin. Kjær, a geologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, suspected the glacier was hiding an explosive secret. The helicopter landed near the surging river that drains the glacier, sweeping out rocks...

Illinois last year enacted a Bail Reform Law intended to make bail affordable for poor people. Kim Geiger of the Chicago Tribune explained at the time of passage: …the new law creates new rights for people in custody at Illinois jails and aims to move away from requiring people charged with relatively minor crimes to post cash bail as a condition of their release. The legislation reflects a general consensus among criminal justice advocates, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, and Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx that the state's cash bail system is unfair to poor people. Under the previous...

It was never a question of "if." It was always a matter of "when." The seizure of a New York Times reporter's phone and email records has sent a chill down the spine of every reporter concerned about protecting his or her sources. That means every serious reporter — especially those in Washington who report on politics and national security. It is disturbing because reporters need to be able to do their jobs, unfettered. But absolutely no one should be surprised. First off, the Trump administration has been all too clear about its scorn for established press rights — with...

If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama. Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component...

The headline should have been: “Security Guard Apprehends Shooter and Saves Lives.” Instead, it’s another case of the police shooting and killing an innocent black man. Eyewitnesses say that at Manny’s Blue Room Bar in Robbins, [Cook County, Chicago] Ill., security told a group of intoxicated men they had to leave. One of the men returned armed, at which point shots were exchanged between them and armed security guards. One of the guards, Jemel Roberson, 26, managed to restrain one of the gunmen. From WGN9: “He had somebody on the ground with his knee in back with his gun in...