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Lawsuit Forces Chicago To Accept Anti-Jihad Bus Ads

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Kiichiro SatoThe Chicago Transit Authority has agreed to display plain-spoken anti-jihad ads on city buses, following a lawsuit by the American Freedom Law Center.

City officials initially rejected the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s anti-jihad ads, even after the city accepted bus ads that advertized a sanitized portrayal of jihad as exercise and education rather than warfare. The ads will be attached to 20 buses for $10,000.

Each ad includes a tagline “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

The tagline is a direct response to a series of bus ads posted by a group of people affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Their December 2012 “MyJihad” public-relations campaign portrays Islamic war — jihad — as a peaceful exercise.

Read more from this story HERE.

Convicted Murderer Mistakenly Freed Recaptured in Illinois

Photo Credit: Cook County Sheriff’s OfficeCHICAGO – A convicted murderer from Indiana who was mistakenly released after a Chicago court appearance was back in custody Saturday after authorities tracked him down at a house in southern Illinois about 60 miles away.

Steven L. Robbins, 44, was rearrested late Friday night without incident in Kankakee, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release. Although the details of his capture weren’t immediately released, officials said they used various leads and interviews with friends and family members at police headquarters to locate him.

The reason Robbins was able to escape in the first place, Illinois officials acknowledged, was because they lost paperwork directing them to return him to Indiana.

Robbins was serving a 60-year sentence for murder in Indiana and was escorted by Cook County sheriff’s deputies to Chicago this week for a court appearance in a separate case involving drug and armed violence charges — a case that had actually been dismissed in 2007.

After appearing before two Cook County Circuit Court judges, Robbins was taken to a jail on Chicago’s South Side. He was released hours later, instead of being sent back to Indiana to continue his murder sentence. The public was not alerted that he was on the loose for about 24 hours.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cruz to Rahm: Don’t Mess with Texas

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has a message for firearms manufacturers and banks under attack from Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel: Texas welcomes you.

Cruz pilloried Emanuel’s gun-control efforts and invited executives to consider the warmer, friendlier climes of the Lone Star State in a Tuesday letter to the CEOs of Bank of America, TD Bank, Sturm & Ruger, and Smith & Wesson.

Emanuel pressured banks to stop extending lines of credit to firearms manufactures in a letter sent Friday.

Cruz responded that such actions “call into doubt the claims of President Barack Obama and Washington Democrats that they do not seek to strip Americans of our Second Amendment rights.”

“You may be understandably concerned that there are risks to refusing to comply with the demands of a politician who has earned the nickname, ‘The Godfather.'”

Read more from this story HERE.

Chicago Transit Authority Passenger Attacked With Sock Filled With Human Feces

A woman riding the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line in Oak Park told police she was last week attacked by another passenger wielding a sock filled with human feces.

“He had a sock full of his poop on me,” the 21-year-old college student told the Pioneer Press. “It was everywhere; on my face, my hair, my clothes.”

The victim, requesting anonymity, said she screamed and tried to follow her attacker, but he escaped up the Austin Boulevard exit and ran northbound on Austin.

The college student, who came to Oak Park six weeks ago to live with a family and provide in-home child care, said she was riding an east-bound train from Oak Park to Chicago when she was attacked.

“The guy got on with me at [the] Oak Park [station],” she said. “I wasn’t really paying attention. … “Next stop [at Austin], he throws something in my face.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Stunning Collapse of Obama, Even in Black Community

By Rebel Pundit. After his meteoric ascent to the top of the American political arena in the country’s history, we are now in the midst of witnessing one of the most stunning collapses of any man ever to hold the office of President of the United States.

Over the past few weeks we have begun to see the ultimate unraveling of support for the president, with women and youth fleeing from his side. But what is even more surprising and perhaps unimaginable to the president and his faithful media cult is that he is now also losing members of his normally deemed “untouchable” base of support—poor, inner-city black Americans.

There is little doubt, due the historic and tremendous pressure on black Americans to support the first African-American President of the United States simply because he is not a white Republican, the President will win the black vote. However, just as his strength and reputation are growing weaker every day, the same is quickly becoming true of the support from the community he claims to be the strongest advocate for—the community-organized voting bloc on Chicago’s south and west sides that many say he has long since abandoned.

In the course of an ongoing investigation into the root causes of the rising tide of violence and horrifying murder rate this year in Chicago’s most destitute neighborhoods, several video interviews I conducted with black American voters from the community-organized south and west side, reveal a community that is fed up with the status quo–the status quo that keeps these communities ridden with poverty, homelessness, unemployment, dismantled families, and, of course, skyrocketing murder rates. And residents say, “it is the black Democratic leadership implementing a liberal agenda” that is to blame for the ongoing plight in their community.

Community activist Mark Carter says, “our issues have not been met on, have not been adhered to, and it’s almost as if they are just saying even though no one has addressed your issues, just go with ‘em anyway. And we say no.” Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s the Rebel Pundit’s interview with black Chicagoans:

‘Martin Luther King was a Republican’: The billboard that encourages African-Americans to switch parties

By Graham Smith. Billboards claiming iconic civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican last week appeared in the black neighbourhoods of three Texas cities, angering local residents.

The advertising hoardings erected in Dallas, Houston and Austin by a conservative organisation to encourage African-Americans to ‘Vote Republican!’ have been branded ‘disrespectful’ by one Dallas resident.

The Democrats traditionally attract a far higher proportion of black voters than the Republican party.

But Claver Kamau-Imani, the founder of RagingElephants.org, claims he has the documentation to prove Dr King, who was assassinated in 1968, voted Republican.

And he believes his billboards – which proclaim ‘Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican. Vote Republican! – will encourage other African-Americans to join the party. Read more from this story HERE.

Leaked Emails: US Allowed Sinaloa Cartel to “Smuggle Tons of Drugs into Chicago”

Leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor cite a Mexican diplomat who says the U.S. government works with Mexican cartels to traffic drugs into the United States and has sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.

Many people have doubted the quality of Stratfor’s intelligence, but the information from MX1—a Mexican foreign service officer who doubled as a confidential source for Stratfor—seems to corroborate recent claims about U.S. involvement in the drug war in Mexico.

Most notably, the reports from MX1 line up with assertions by a Sinaloa cartel insider that cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is a U.S. informant, the Sinaloa cartel was “given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago,” and Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels.

Read more from this story HERE.

Striking Chicago Teachers Have Worse Standardized Test Scores Than Illinois Students, But Are Paid $100k per Year

Photo credit: BrentDPayne

The Chicago Public Schools teachers’ union agreed Tuesday to end the strike and accept some of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s reforms in exchange for pay increases that would bring the average teacher’s salary to $100,000 a year.

Reforms include holding teachers partly accountable for their students standardized test scores.

But according to a 2008 study by Illinois Education Research Council, CPS teachers don’t perform much better on standardized tests than their own students.

In Illinois, all high school juniors and seniors are required to take the ACT test, whether they plan to attend college or not. Public school teachers in Chicago who took the test when they were in high school averaged a score of 19 out of a possible 36 — which is worse than the average median score for all students nationwide.

In fact, Illinois students beat the teachers, scoring a 21 on average, though Chicago-area students only scored in the 17-18 range.

Read more from this story HERE.

Nearly 40% of Striking Chicago Teachers Send Their Own Children to Private Schools

Photo credit: firedoglakedotcom

The Chicago teachers’ strike is an awkward dinner conversation between President Barack Obama and his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Many of the policy prescriptions in the new Chicago teachers’ contract designed to create more accountability are supported by the Obama administration.

As the Chicago teachers’ strike continues, we’ve learned that they make $71-76,000 a year and they turned down a 16% pay increase, which amounts to $11,360. They work nine months out of the year, but say that this strike is benefits oriented. However, given that ABC World News didn’t even air this story last Sunday and most of the media, with the exception of CBS, failing to mention the compensation statistics in their broadcast – suffice to say that the media will probably ignore the fact that almost 40% of Chicago’s public school teachers send their kids to private schools.

I’m not against public education, but the fact that these teachers make enough to send their kids to private schools shows that Chicago’s public teachers are aware of the serial failure within the system. Second, it shows that these teachers have zero confidence in their own respective school district. Why are the teachers going on strike? Aren’t the contentious measures they’re squabbling about aimed at enhancing accountability that will make their institutions of learning better for the students? It appears this strike, like most union strikes, are defined by these three words: give. me. more.

However, given the state of public education and that of Chicago, it’s not alien for public school teachers to ship their kids to private institutions.

To see the actual statistics for Chicago and other areas, read more from this story HERE.

Video: Allen West Says Chris Matthews may be “Off His Meds”

In this short clip, Allen West suggests that Chris Matthew’s ridiculous racism charges reflect he may be “off his meds.”

Whistle-blower: state employees forced to attend political event with Pelosi, Jackson

Photo credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

Documents and a whistle-blower affidavit obtained by The Daily Caller charge that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., participated in an unethical — and possibly illegal — effort to force 76 employees of an Illinois state agency to engage in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.

According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.

On March 3, Pelosi flew to Chicago to endorse Rep. Jackson Jr., 17 days ahead of a heated March 20 Democratic primary he later won. Pelosi was scheduled to make the endorsement at a press conference later in the day, after she participated in an hour-long “forum” hosted by the elder Jackson at the headquarters of his progressive Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Pelosi politicized that forum, jumping the gun and endorsing Jackson Jr. earlier than planned.

“One of the reasons I am here, and I will do this following this wonderful meeting, is to publicly state my endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr. for re-election,” Pelosi said at the Rainbow PUSH forum. “I do so with great pride. I remember when he came to the Congress with a great name and a great tradition of his parents. But he came and he made his own mark in the Congress from his own generation.”

Read more from this story HERE.