Free Republic

Detectives have long wondered what secrets serial killer John Wayne Gacy and other condemned murderers took to the grave when they were executed -- mostly whether they had other unknown victims. Now, in a game of scientific catch-up, the Cook County Sheriff's Department is trying to be creative: They've created DNA profiles of Gacy and others and figured out they could get the executed men entered in a national database shared with other law enforcement agencies because the murderers were technically listed as homicide victims when they were put to death by the state.

Cook County commissioners give initial sign-off on tax hikes November 02, 2012|By Hal Dardick | Tribune reporter (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Cook County commissioners on Friday endorsed a $41.7 million set of new and increased taxes that would hit the pocketbooks of smokers, some businesses, gun buyers, and the owners of gambling machines at casinos and bars. In a series of votes, the Finance Committee recommended passage of the new taxes proposed by County Board President Toni Preckwinkle as part of her $2.95 billion 2013 budget plan.

Election officials scoff at security experts’ questions about voting machines BY DAN ROZEK Sun-Times Media October 28, 2012 6:32PM Argonne National Laboratory researchers Roger Johnst(left) JWarner demonstrated how voting machines can be tampered with. Warner removed circuit panel Argonne National Laboratory researchers Roger Johnston (left) and Jon Warner demonstrated how voting machines can be tampered with. Warner removed a circuit panel, an easy access into the machine. | Rich Hein~Sun-Times Updated: October 29, 2012 2:39AM Using a straightened paper clip, Jon Warner needed less than 10 seconds to pop a crucial component out of the touch-screen voting machine. The simple...

Campaign 2012: When an incumbent Democratic president is virtually tied in a congressional district he carried by high double digits in 2008, and is losing in the suburbs of his hometown, there could be trouble brewing. In August, a poll by the Joliet, Ill.-based polling firm of McKeon and Associates, found President Obama leading challenger Mitt Romney in Cook County, which includes Chicago and its suburbs, by a 12-point margin 49-37. That would seem to be a comfortable edge, but it is significantly smaller than traditional margins needed to outweigh the more Republican downstate vote. "He has to come out...

...One woman — a mom from the suburbs of Chicago — took it upon herself to mount a crusade against voter fraud here in Illinois and she is close to shutting down at least two major avenues of fraud that Democrats have relied on for DECADES in Chicagoland...... Her name is Sharon Meroni and she needs your help today. It’s down to the wire and Sharon still needs 500 Republican election judges in Cook County…and she needs them by this coming Thursday. If she doesn’t find 500 more judges, then Democrats will get to fill those positions…just like they have...

Full title of article: URGENT HELP NEEDED: 500 more election judges needed in Cook County by Thursday — send to your email lists @ReincePriebus #MittRomney #voterfraud Cook County is still short 500 election judges for the November 6th election. If Republicans don’t fill these positions by Thursday, then Democrats will be be able to staff them; the positions pay $170/day and are choice patronage plums that Democrats have enjoyed for years. Typically, those slots are given to union thugs or “community organizers” to fill because Republicans have never mounted any effort to combat voter fraud in this state…until now. More...

Toke One For The Gipper: Preckwinkle Says Reagan Deserves “A Special Place In Hell” For War On Drugs Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle defended the city's move to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana by saying former President Ronald Reagan deserves "a special place in hell" for "making drug use political." Preckwinkle has been an outspoken advocate of decriminalizing pot because she says drug laws unfairly lead to minorities behind bars. Preckwinkle has never shied from making her drug stance known, and she didn't mince words with the crowd attending the conference led by former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar at...

President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows. A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous. Those numbers do not bode well for the president. “He has to come out of Cook County with a...

President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows. A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely. Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous. Those numbers do not bode well for the president. “He has to come out of Cook County with a...

Feds charge former head of Chicago Heights office of county job-training program By Gregory Tejeda Times Correspondent CHICAGO | A Chicago woman who supervised four field offices, including one in Chicago Heights, of a Cook County job-training program faces federal charges she falsified documents related to an Illinois state review of the county’s summer youth program. Brendolyn Hart-Glover, 42, is charged with engaging in a scheme to falsify documents. A criminal complaint was unsealed Friday following her arrest, and she appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert. During 2010, Hart-Glover was acting director of the county’s President’s Office of Employment...

Elections aren’t always fair, and primaries can make it especially difficult. That’s life. Redistricting sometimes forces two good incumbents to run against each other; look at the battle between young freshman moderate Adam Kinzinger (ACU rating 72%) and seasoned conservative Don Manzullo (same period ACU 92%, lifetime ACU 95.5%) for a House seat in the 2012 Illinois map. We’d love to re-elect both, but we have to choose. Such primaries are painful; however much you hope to keep an internecine battle cordial, you have to talk issues, and competence, and sometimes personality too. Primaries can pose an opportunity for a...

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Alvin Boutte, Jr., the adviser who encouraged the state to invest in Democrats’ beloved ShoreBank as it was failing, has agreed to pay a fine, to have his securities license suspended, and to work under “heightened supervision” in the securities industry for the next year. The ShoreBank scandal erupted in 2010 as Chicago Democrats, particularly Rep. Jan Schakowsky, tried to bail out the bank using any means necessary–whether federal, state, or private money. The bank’s closure was delayed several times–evidence, critics charged, of preferential treatment from the Obama administration. Eventually, under pressure from the Tea...

Project Shield was supposed to make citizens safer. But in the end, the $45-million Homeland Security program more resembled a disaster, wasting taxpayers’ dollars and failing to make a single citizen more secure. The failed Cook County initiative was replete with equipment that failed to work, missing records and untrained first responders according to a report by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The report, to be released Monday but obtained by The Sun-Times and NBC5 News, found “millions of tax dollars may have been wasted.”

Former State Senator and Republican Cook County Board President candidate Roger Keats and his wife Tina left Illinois to live in Texas. They bid farewell to their Illinois friends in a Wilmette Beacon article, and with this letter, saying they’re “voting with their feet and their wallets.” GOOD BYE AND GOOD LUCK As we leave Illinois for good, I wanted to say goodbye to my friends and wish all of you well. I am a lifelong son of the heartland and proud of it. After 60 years, I leave Illinois with a heavy heart. BUT enough is enough! The leaders...

Three people were shot at the Cook County Courthouse in Grand Marais this afternoon, the Associated Press is reporting. Radio station WTIP in Grand Marais reported that the county sheriff said people were shot inside the courthouse between 4:15 and 4:30 p.m. today, and the suspect is in custody. State Public Safety spokesman Doug Neville also said the suspect was in custody. He had no details on what led to the shooting. Neville said two of the wounded were being treated at a hospital in Grand Marais, with the third taken to Duluth. The Cook County Sheriff’s Department would only...

John Wayne Gacy Victim Finally Identified November 29, 2011 10:56 AM William George Bundy has been identified as one of John Wayne Gacy's victims. (CBS) CHICAGO (CBS) — One of the unknown victims of John Wayne Gacy has been identified, more than 30 years after his death at the hands of one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers. Using DNA technology, investigators were able to determine that William George Bundy, who was last seen on October of 1976, was killed by Gacy. The news comes after Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart launched a new effort to determine the eight...

While it's true that President Obama began his political career in the living room of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, his first political sponsor and major fundraiser was Antoin "Tony" Rezko. The pair go back to the 1990s and Obama's state Senate years, but they are best known for the still-not-completely-explained 2005 real estate deal that allowed the Obamas to buy their Chicago South Side mansion, while Rezko's wife bought a narrow strip of the home's lot on the same day. At that time, Rezko was under federal investigation for influence peddling and fraud while serving...

CHICAGO — Three men were ordered held without bond Saturday, charged in a Wednesday shootout that left four people dead, including a security guard from Hobart, in a Far South Side Altgeld Gardens store. The shootout happened during an attempted armed robbery inside The Connect, a department-type store in the 500 block of East 130th Street, police said. At least one of several would-be robbers exchanged gunfire with the security guard, Michael Banks, 30, of 3958 Willow St., Hobart, authorities said. Eric O’Neal, 18, Devon Walker, 18, and Alfred Spikes, 20, all of Chicago, were each charged with four counts...

Property taxes are unfair. Taxpayers don’t understand their bills. And that’s not likely to change. It is amazing to me, in this era of Tea Party rebellions, that no organized campaign has been launched to abolish property taxes in Illinois. The idea would certainly be popular with voters. Last week, thousands could be found standing in lines at the assessor’s offices in Cook County as second installment tax bills arrived in the mail. Most were seniors wondering how they had lost their senior citizen exemption, a property tax break that can be worth hundreds of dollars. Others just couldn’t understand...

Roger Keats, a former Illinois state senator and Cook County Board president, is packing up and leaving the Land of Lincoln for good. The 62-year-old Keats was a good government reformer who helped clean up the rampant corruption in the Chicago-area courts uncovered by Operations Greylord and Gambat. But now he’s throwing in the towel, and he and his wife are heading for Texas. “I am tired of subsidizing crooks," Keats told the Wilmette Beacon. In “Good Bye and Good Luck,” a letter to all the friends and political supporters he’s leaving behind after 60 years, Keats says he is...