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Ruth King

Paul G. Vallas For Chicago Lawyers, Exonerations Are a Cash Cow The city has paid over $700 million in settlements to criminal defendants since 2000.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/chicago-exonerations-criminal-justice

Chicago law firms have found a new way to get paid at taxpayers’ expense: suing the city for alleged police misconduct. The suits are draining hundreds of millions from Chicago’s coffers at a time when the city can’t afford to lose a dime. Voters should hold their leaders accountable for enabling this racket.

For years, Chicago has led the nation in overturning supposedly wrongful convictions. This has resulted in a windfall for law firms—both those suing the city and those hired by the city to settle cases. Since 2000, Chicago has paid over $700 million in settlements to criminal defendants who claim to have been framed by police, at least $138 million of which has gone to the city’s outside counsel. Chicago alone was responsible for more than half of the nation’s exonerations in 2022.

The pattern continued this year. In March, a local jury awarded $120 million to two men who served 16 years in prison before their convictions were overturned. On the same day, the Chicago City Council approved $280,000 to settle a claim from an activist injured in a violent protest from 2020 that left 18 officers wounded.

These big-money settlements have prompted some Chicago law firms to specialize in city claims. In 2022, just one firm settled cases totaling $42 million of the $117 million that the city paid out that year. Based on a standard one-third contingency fee, the lawyers likely reaped a handsome $14 million.

City leaders are to blame for this swindle. During her eight-year tenure as Cook County state’s attorney, Kim Foxx prioritized the rights of criminals over the law-abiding and law enforcement. Her policies effectively encouraged local law firms to represent plaintiffs in civil rights suits against the Chicago Police Department, often resulting in mammoth, taxpayer-funded settlements.

Freedom Revealed Should Be Required Reading for DC Swamp Creatures Freedom Revealed slices through political noise with a blunt truth: freedom is a system of limited government, open markets, and responsibility—or it breaks down. By Tim Tapp

https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/07/freedom-revealed-should-be-required-reading-for-dc-swamp-creatures/

Every now and then, a book comes along that doesn’t just add to the pile of political commentary—it slices through the noise like a clean, sharp blade. Freedom Revealed by Don Wilkie is one of those books. For readers tired of politicians who speak in platitudes about “our freedoms” while voting for another bloated spending bill, this work reads like a slap of cold water across the face.

The book is built around a bold thesis: freedom isn’t some warm-and-fuzzy abstraction; it’s a system. Like a machine, it has parts that either work together or jam. And here’s the kicker—once you see freedom this way, you realize how fragile it is and how reckless our political class has been in tinkering with the gears.

Most Americans think of freedom in sentimental terms—flags, fireworks, maybe a soaring anthem at a ballgame. But this book demolishes that shallow view. Freedom is mechanical: limited government, open markets, and individual responsibility. Remove or weaken one, and the machine sputters. The point isn’t poetic; it’s brutally practical. The book walks the reader through Franklin’s insights and shows that the republic’s design was never accidental. It was an engineering marvel, and we’ve been stripping it for parts.

One of the most engaging sections is the comparison between the marketplace and government. The marketplace, competitive and dynamic, drives down waste and breeds prosperity. Government, by its nature, is non-competitive and therefore breeds waste. Simple? Yes. Devastating? Absolutely. The book lays it out with examples anyone can grasp: competition improves service, lowers costs, and fuels prosperity; government expands rules, bloats budgets, and smothers initiative.

You finish these chapters shaking your head at the obviousness of it all—and wondering why lawmakers in D.C. can’t seem to grasp it. Or maybe they can, and that’s what makes the book sting.

Freedom Revealed argues that prosperity and the rise of the middle class didn’t happen because of government policy; they happened because government was limited enough to let the marketplace breathe. This is the kind of point that would make Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin nod in agreement. The middle class isn’t the product of subsidies and entitlements—it’s the natural reward of citizens allowed to compete and innovate without bureaucrats choking them out.

Europe’s Elites Want a Great Replacement Just don’t call it that. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/europes-elites-want-a-great-replacement/

One of the consequences of the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, was this: they reminded native Europeans that a good many of the millions of Muslims who live in their countries are not necessarily the friendly bearers of cultural enrichment that politicians claim them to be. After Gazans massacred Israelis on such a terrifying scale, native Europeans were compelled to recognize that the same thing could happen – tomorrow morning – on their own turf. Little wonder that anti-immigration parties have won more support.

And nowhere in Europe, perhaps, has awareness of the danger of mass immigration spiked more than in Britain. A handful of brave souls have been talking about the Muslim rape gangs for years, but even now precious few of the perpetrators have been brought to justice. A not inconsiderable percentage of Muslims in Britain admit to pollsters that they’d like to see the country subjected to sharia law. A long list of major British cities have Muslim mayors. Even as native Brits struggle to find decent, affordable housing, the government is putting Muslim illegals up in luxury hotels.

Those who dare to complain publicly about any of these things risk arrest and prosecution. Indeed, while people are allowed to march in the streets waving Hamas flags, displaying the Union Jack or the St. George’s cross – the flag of England – is treated as a crime. For years, both the Conservatives and Labourites have repeatedly promised to reduce immigration and repeatedly broken their promises. Reform UK, the party whose electoral fortunes have skyrocketed as a result, seems too timid to do what’s necessary to rescue the UK from full Islamization.

Perfect timing, then, for an article in the Guardian arguing that Britain, and indeed all of Europe, needs to increase immigration levels. “Those wanting to shut Europe’s borders,” avers the British journalist Alex Clark, “must contend with a stark demographic reality: the continent’s native population is expected to fall sharply over the next century in an era of low birth rates.” So if anti-immigration parties take control in Europe and actually succeed in reducing immigration rates, it “could speed up the population decline of Europe, creating economic shocks including slower growth and soaring costs from pensions and elderly care.”

Is Any Place Safe to Visit Anymore? Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/09/07/is-any-place-safe-to-visit-anymore-n4943423

I’ve always thought I’d eventually make it to the United Kingdom. It’s one of those “bucket list” destinations—castles, history, the pubs, the whole cultural experience, even the Harry Potter experience. But truth be told, over the past several years my appetite for visiting has cooled considerably. Sometimes the decline of a nation unfolds so quickly, you feel as though you’re watching it in real time. 

PJ Media previously reported on the recent arrest of Graham Linehan, the man behind the sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, and the whole incident has pushed the UK squarely into the category of places I may never set foot in. Short of a total course correction in British culture and politics, I can’t imagine ever going. 

Earlier this month, Linehan touched down at Heathrow from the U.S. and was immediately surrounded by five armed police officers—and then arrested for three tweets he posted back in April. His “crime”? Pointing out that letting a biological male into female-only spaces is, by definition, a violent, abusive act. He even joked that if authorities won’t step in to protect women, maybe ordinary people will have to. Predictably, critics ran with the line about “punch him in the b***s,” portraying it as some dire threat of violence. But anyone with half a brain could see it for what it was: hyperbole, a comedian mocking the absurdity of the world we’ve let ourselves live in. In Britain today, though, nuance is dead—and so is free speech.

Even Linehan’s bail conditions were an Orwellian overreach, banning him from accessing social media altogether. Those restrictions were only lifted on Saturday, highlighting again how intrusive and destructive the system is becoming. Public figures remain deeply split—some insist the police response was grossly disproportionate while others call his tweets “totally unacceptable.” Yet no one even questions the biggest outrage: that a citizen was placed in handcuffs over words.

Chicago Passes 300 Dead No reason to send the National Guard, Chicago mayor insists. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/chicago-passes-300-dead/

Even as Illinois Gov. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continued their press tour, condemning President Trump for proposing to fight crime in Chiraq, the body count in the city has passed 300 this year.

After 11 murders last week, Chicago hit the big 300. The next big round number will be 1,400 shot which at current rates, Chicago will likely pass by the end of this week.

September is already up to 8 murders. Probably more by the time you read this.

The media spent so much time platforming Pritzker’s lies that crime is down (it’s not, the 4 killed this weekend match the same weekend in 2024) or Johnson’s useless executive order refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement that it completely ignored the minor story of the people actually being murdered.

At least 16 people have been shot, four fatally, in shootings across Chicago this weekend, police said. This weekend’s gun violence comes after at least 58 people were shot, eight fatally, across the city over the long Labor Day holiday weekend last week.

Nothing to see here. Just lots of bodies. And politicians desperately trying to spin this as public safety.

The Man Who Invented Conservatism A new book rescues Frank Meyer from obscurity. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-man-who-invented-conservatism/

Ask the random conservative to name a modern architect of his political philosophy and names like Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley are likely to come to mind. Maybe George Will or Irving Kristol, Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan. It would take a perceptive student of conservatism to come up with the name of Frank S. Meyer.

Daniel J. Flynn’s brand new book The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer is a riveting, meticulously researched biography that breathes life into the extraordinary journey of Meyer, a man whose intellectual odyssey from fervent Communist to architect of modern American conservatism is as improbable as it is inspiring.

FrontPage Mag contributor Daniel Flynn is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of seven books including A Conservative History of the American Left; Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (I interviewed him about that one for FrontPage Mag here); and Why the Left Hates America, which I’ve also read and recommend.

Flynn’s new biography is a compelling contribution to the historiography of American political thought.

The BLS Blows It Again!

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/09/08/the-bls-blows-it-again/

When President Donald Trump tapped economist EJ Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the elites in Washington clucked their thick tongues. Antoni might have a doctorate in economics, but he’s not “widely recognized”! He’s tweeted some things that turned out wrong! Worse still, he seems to like Trump!

But on Friday, the BLS proved once again why it is in desperate need of an overhaul by an outsider such as Antoni.

When it released its monthly jobs report on Friday, the BLS said the economy had created 22,000 jobs in August – a weak number that generated countless headlines.

But who knows what the actual number is? These days, you could throw a dart at a wall while blindfolded and be as accurate as this agency.

In each monthly report, the BLS revises the previous two months’ numbers as additional data come in.

You’d think that these revisions would be rather small, given the massive size of the survey it conducts each month – more than 100,000 businesses and government agencies.

You’d be wrong.

The chart below shows the initial report, and the subsequent revisions, since the November elections. Does this look like the work of top professionals?

From Peace Laureate to Press Jailer: The Authoritarian Transformation of Muhammad Yunus by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21891/bangladesh-yunus-authoritarian

The silencing of Bangladesh’s media is not just about censorship — it is part of a larger transformation of the country into a breeding ground for radical Islamist politics that threatens the stability of the entire region.

By criminalizing the press, Yunus is dismantling the very institutions that could hold his interim regime accountable, while empowering Islamist groups that thrive in darkness.

Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladeshi franchise of Al-Qaeda, openly justifies murdering secular writers and bloggers by branding them “enemies of Islam.”

Yunus’s reliance on Islamist allies such as Jamaat-e-Islami undermines this role by pushing Bangladesh into a trajectory that will likely make it hostile to US interests.

If Bangladesh descends further into authoritarianism and Islamist radicalization, it risks becoming another Afghanistan — a sanctuary for extremist groups with transnational ambitions.

Washington cannot afford to remain silent while an unelected regime dismantles democracy and silences the media in Bangladesh.

Yunus has promised elections in February 2026, but his Islamist allies are already signaling their intention to sabotage the process. If the media remains silenced, if journalists remain in prison, the path is clear: Bangladesh will be robbed of its democracy and its people robbed of their voice.

Bangladesh stands at a dangerous crossroads. The persecution of journalists under Yunus is not merely an assault on freedom of expression – it is the deliberate dismantling of democracy itself. Every day that Monjurul Alam Panna and other journalists remain behind bars, Bangladesh moves closer to becoming another Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

If Yunus’s regime is not challenged now, Bangladesh will not just lose its democracy — it will proceed to export instability across South Asia.

For years, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been synonymous with the brutal silencing of dissent, turning his country into one of the world’s largest prisons for journalists. Today, shockingly, Bangladesh — once hailed as a moderate Muslim democracy — is following the same dangerous path under the unelected, military-backed rule of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Since the Islamist-backed coup of 2024 that installed Yunus in power, the country has witnessed an unprecedented assault on freedom of the press. Journalists have been dragged to jail under trumped-up charges, assaulted in courtrooms, and criminalized under the vague Anti-Terrorism Act. The once vibrant Bangladeshi media, long known for its resilience, is now suffocating under a regime that increasingly mirrors Taliban-style authoritarianism.

The Issue Is Never the Issue: Senate Hearing Turns Into Proxy War RFK Jr.’s Senate grilling wasn’t about COVID or the CDC—it was a proxy battle over power, Trump, and who controls the narrative. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/07/the-issue-is-never-the-issue-senate-hearing-turns-into-proxy-war/

The issue is never the issue.

The appearance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, before the Pfizer Tribunal at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday reminded me of the truth of that famous saying of Saul Alinsky.

The issue is never the issue. What is always the issue, according to that community organizer nonpareil, is power.

Ostensibly, Secretary Kennedy came to answer questions about COVID (remember that scam?) and the performance of people at—or, rather, recently at—the Centers for Disease Control. He recently fired the new, freshly confirmed director, Susan Monarez, for being “untrustworthy,” and some 1000 staffers walked out in solidarity or—what’s that other word beginning with an “s”?—Oh, right: in a snit.

One by one, the senators, mostly Democrats but also a few Republicans, screamed and gesticulated at Kennedy, accused him of being a “charlatan” and worse, and demanded that he resign or be fired.

One friendly questioner asked whether Kennedy thought that the response to COVID had been “politicized.” Indeed, it had, Kennedy said. Moreover, the government and the media lied to the public about many aspects of the disease, beginning with its origin. (No bats were involved in this entertainment.)

The public was also aggressively lied to about the danger of the virus—overwhelmingly, the only vulnerable parts of the population were the elderly, the obese, and the diabetic. We were lied to about the efficacy of “social distancing”—it was a made-up nostrum—and cloth masks. They are worse than useless. I still see damaged souls driving around in cars or walking outside by themselves wearing a mask. You might as well, as some wag proposed, wear a seat belt while walking around as a sort of safety blanket.

But the largest load of lies concerned the various COVID vaccines. Kennedy’s views about the efficacy and safety of vaccines are often caricatured. You may or may not always agree with him, but his views are nuanced, well-informed, and subtle. Several senators seemed surprised that Kennedy could agree with the proposition that President Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for overseeing Operation Warp Speed, which produced a spate of COVID vaccines in a matter of a few months, while also remaining highly critical of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

From Sydney to Buenos Aires: Iran’s Global Terror Campaign by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21890/irans-global-terror-campaign

Investigations revealed that the IRGC had employed intermediaries in Australia, including organized crime networks, to carry out these attacks, demonstrating the regime’s continuing reliance on proxies to pursue its hostile objectives abroad.

From the 1980s onward. Iran has been implicated in multiple deadly attacks against American troops in Lebanon, killing hundreds of U.S. diplomats and military personnel, all carried out by Hezbollah under Tehran’s guidance.

The Iranian regime also had a role in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. In 2018, a U.S. federal court ruling determined that Iran provided material support to Al-Qaeda in the period leading up to and following the 9/11 attacks, resulting in a multibillion-dollar judgment for the families of the victims.

[I]t is difficult to understand why some international actors have advocated for engagement, negotiation or sanctions relief with Iran. Diplomatic overtures and economic incentives have not only failed to curb the regime’s aggressive behavior; they have emboldened it.

Closing Iranian embassies and consulates, expelling diplomats, and halting trade with Iran — and especially secondary sanctions: banning trade with countries that trade with Iran — would disrupt its operations, curb its influence, and send a message that the regime’s pattern of aggression and antisemitism will not be tolerated.

Iran’s deep involvement in antisemitic attacks in Australia should serve as a kick-in-the-head wake-up call to the European Union and the wider international community. Australia made the unprecedented decision to expel the Iranian ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, the first such diplomatic action in the country since World War II.