Chicago is among the more notoriously extra-legal government zones in the US. I'd call it a municipality, but that doesn't do justice to the machine that is Chicago. It's essentially run by a powerful, unaccountable government-criminal-corporate organization structure, and has been for a century or more.

Look, Chicago has corruption problems, but calling it an "extra-legal government zone" is so hopelessly hyperbolic that it hurts any sort of real argument. The police have had literally thousands of lawsuits paying out hundreds of millions of dollars over just the last 5 years. Police officers, a police chief, mayors and even governors have been arrested and jailed over everything from bribery to brutality. If lawyers aren't suing on what looks like a slam-dunk case of civil rights violations, why have they sued (and won) so many other times?

It's incredible that someone as patently deranged as Richard Daley was allowed to run Chicago for 22 years. I'm still bitter about Meigs Field.