President Obama surely didn’t intend it, but he deserves some credit for last year’s 7.4 percent drop in murder rates. His election caused gun sales to soar, and crime rates to plummet. While gun sales started notably rising in October
Across the country, states big and small are facing significant budget gaps. In California, the worst case by far, candidates for state office are debating how to close a $19 billion budget deficit. In Florida, meanwhile, another multi-billion dollar budget
The infamous Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt distinguished between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft.” Dishonest graft, he said, meant actual theft from the treasury, or shaking down criminals for bribes. Honest graft, on the other hand, simply meant taking
Critics of the amount of golf President Obama has been playing need to look at the bright side: it’s equipped him for a very serious task at hand. Since he’s shown such pitiful leadership for a president purporting to care
Maybe you first saw it at a museum retrospective or a revival theater, with the marquee emblazoned with tag-lines like, “The most action-packed film of all time!” and “More exciting than a dozen Die Hards!” Or perhaps your first taste
PROVO, Utah (AP) – Gary Coleman, the child star of the smash 1970s TV sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” whose later career was marred by medical and legal problems, has died after suffering an intercranial hemorrhage. He was 42. Utah Valley Regional
ShoreBank’s connections to the White House and Capitol Hill, as well as to the green jobs movement, have been documented here at BigGovernment.com. Yesterday, Angela Caputo of Chicago Now revealed that the “community development” bank became a predatory lender in
Unless you are brand new to the Blogosphere, you are very well aware of the thuggish protests organized by President Obama’s closest political and community-organizing allies, targeting Bank of America and its employees. Potential motives for these actions have been
The race issue refuses to disappear from American politics because problems tied to race persist. Just as children are often the best witnesses to the shortcomings of parents, so the ill treated are often testimony to a nation’s shortcomings. The
Writing for Fortune.com, Nina Easton relays her first-hand account of the uncivil disobedience and “mob”tactics exhibited by SEIU and the National People’s Action (NPA), as they terrorized a teenage child in his own home. Baer’s teenage son Jack — alone
The Central Illinois 9/12 Project became one of the first to expose — beginning this past March on BigGovernment.com — Shorebank’s extensive green and microfinancing agendas, in anticipation of that bank’s impending bailout. Shorebank, a Chicago-based, community-based investment bank, is
I’ve been joking recently that the political climate was moving into territory where it would be impossible for even the GOP to screw up the November elections. I was wrong. Tuesday’s special election to replace the deceased Rep. John Murtha,
The Chicago media covers Illinois political corruption like crime reporters. They show up at the scene, gather for the perp walk, snap a photo, and cover the trial. In short, they wait for the story to happen and then accept
You would think that a conference that features some of the world’s leading scientists talking about a hot-button issue like global warming would attract a bit of old media attention. The Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, currently
It takes a special ad to get a candidate for Senate so upset they hire lawyers to censor it. But that is what is happening in Illinois as the Alexi Giannoulias campaign has unleashed its lawyers on television stations who
That’s the affirmative answer to “Is there a Hollywood Blacklist?” recently posed here by Gary Graham. It exists as certainly as political correctness and passive aggressiveness in Hollywood exist, and you know that it abounds and destroys the talented who
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Chicago Tribune: The fans gathered before the afternoon game against the Pittsburgh Pirates to collect signatures on petitions and to publicize their online petition campaign at t.
Today it was reported that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been calling Wall Street friends to cough up $125 million to save ShoreBank, which faces federal closure next week. Rep. Jan Schakowsky suggested in January that Illinois taxpayers foot
A third instance of Elena Kagan opposing Americans’ Second Amendment right to own a gun became public Thursday, ensuring gun rights will be a major issue in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. It also confirms that President Obama’s gun-control agenda
Arizona’s controversial immigration law has prompted many threats of boycotts. Now it’s spawned a new form of protest: the girlcott. Until today, first place in the Arizona boycott stupidity contest was held by the brilliant MENSA minds who decided to
Writing in Reason, Jacob Sullum‘s got this one dead right: Last month New York Times legal writer Adam Liptak said two recent Supreme Court cases “suggest that the Roberts Court is prepared to adopt a robustly libertarian view of the
I have been perusing the paper trail for SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan, but most of it is mere puffery written for the purposes of a future nomination. I will continue to examine her record and analyze her work (because politicians
This week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons
The health care legislation recently bulldozed through Congress is only the tip of the iceberg. With some 2,400 pages of dense legalese–with thousands of additional pages of regulations implementing the legislation still to be written–this huge statute puts government in
President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi showed their ability to ruthlessly ram through their legislative agenda with a combination of procedural tricks, sleight-of-hand, and painful arm-twisting, all of which could happen again. They also hope to have a Supreme
