Free Republic

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...

When workers came to repair his flood-damaged house, Mike Elliott put his things in storage and moved out temporarily. Three months later, the workers are gone, the job unfinished, and Elliott is still renting a room from his next-door neighbor, wondering when he can move back home. His two-story frame house in Des Plaines needs new floors, a bathroom, a kitchen and plumbing. The half-fixed home is the result of a bureaucratic breakdown in the Cook County program meant to fix the damage.

Every once in a while, you read something in the news which leaves you seething. We live in a world full of both corruption and stupidity — two things which often seem to work synergistically. A couple of days ago, I came across something which had that unique blend of the two, a news story that was like a freshly-brewed cup of tick-me-off in the morning. The story in question comes out of Illinois, via Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website. Short and to the point, Breitbart's article notes that election officials in The Most Corrupt County in the Most Corrupt...

Over 35 counties in Illinois missed the deadline to mail military ballots to our soldiers defending America. But in Chicago, county election officials have taken special steps to ensure that no inmates at the Cook County Jail are unable to cast a ballot. The Chicago Board of Elections hand delivers ballots to the jail. They don’t even wait for the inmates to apply – they bring the applications with the ballots! Over 2,600 inmates have cast ballots so far – strikingly similiar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not recieve a ballot for the Nov 2 election. Disgraceful does...

Turnout in polling places in suburban Cook County show that residents in several areas with large minority populations did not vote early. Numbers released Thursday by the Cook County clerk showed that places like Park Forest and Cicero had lackluster turnout at early voting locations. Park Forest has a minority population of 61 percent, with an African American population of 55 percent. The total population of the suburb is more than 22,000, but as of Wednesday only 747 people had voted. Cicero has over 26,000 registered voters with 77 percent Hispanic, but as of Wednesday only 921 people had shown...

Oh my: Michelle Obama electioneering in polling place? posted at 7:15 pm on October 14, 2010 by Allahpundit regular view When Drudge puts up the red font — with italics, no less — we’re almost obliged to blog it, aren’t we? I’m … outrageously outraged?

A few weeks ago Chicago Magazine published a story that revealed what sure looks like an influence peddling scandal perpetrated by Democrat Cook County Board of Review member Joseph Berrios. The story is filled with the maddeningly typical Chicago corruption. It also seems to implicate his other two fellow board members, Brendan Houlihan and Larry Rogers, Jr -- both Democrats. To date Houlihan has yet to answer to these charges. The Cook County Board of Review is the office responsible for handling property tax complaints and is responsible for lowering the tax rate if a property merits a reduction. As...

Living the American Dream -- on the taxpayers' dime Now, HUD is reviewing housing grants to Cook County workers August 16, 2010 BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter with the BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION Anntoinette R. Brown got the American Dream -- twice. And, though it appears to have been improper to do so, the taxpayers helped pay for it, a Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association investigation has found. Brown, a Cook County government employee, was one of the county's first residents to qualify for the "American Dream Downpayment Initiative," a federally funded housing-assistance effort. Terry M. Gowder Sr. (inset) got a grant...

This story has been building for weeks on HillBuzz.org, but the reporting there was often iffy, hazy, and speculative, so I didn't write about it myself. But this week things have come to a head proving the allegations had some merit because now Cook County GOP Executive Director Jeremy Rose has resigned over the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him. The story goes that on June 17, 2009, a woman was attending a Chicago Young Republicans meeting in Chicago and when she made to leave for the night was prevented from doing so by Rose. Rose began touching the...

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's last year in office is marked by one incident of bilking the taxpayers after another. Each week seems to bring a new example of Stroger and his buddies and family members sticking their hands in our pockets and this week has been no different. In fact, this week we've gotten a twofer as two incidents of Stroger's nest feathering have come to light. The first came on the 27th when Big Boss Todd awarded a $15,000 consulting job to Raymond L. Harris Sr., of Bolingbrook, who worked on Stroger's losing primary campaign to retain...

The Sun-Times reports that the next Cook County Board President might be yet another bought and paid for union stooge. Democrat Party candidate Toni Preckwinkle raised $1.3 million for her campaign for county board president thus far and $220,000 of that came from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). So, what we are seeing is yet another Democrat candidate owned lock, stock and barrel by a public employees union. Gee, I wonder if she’ll be amenable to union demands once in office? Her opponent, GOP candidate Roger Keats, has raised only $19,000 so far. Not that there IS a Republican...

A local rapper and a 35-year-old man are accused of beating a man to death because he accidentally scratched the rapper’s car. Edward Brown and Steven Fox, 26, a rapper known as “Sincere the Realist,” sent the 46-year-old victim into coma and eventually his death, according to prosecutors and police reports. Brown is a family friend of Larry Brown, who died on July 7 from the injuries related to attack, according to court testimony. It was Fox’s car that Larry Brown caused minor damage to when he was returning home in the early morning hours of June 17, assistant state’s...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dan Patlak was an analyst at the Board of Review for eight years. Patlak has been a taxpayer advocate in Wheeling Township where he is in his second term as Wheeling Township Assessor. Patlak is a Certified Illinois Assessing Officer and has been a licensed real estate broker since 1986. Patlak is a member of the National Taxpayers Union and is endorsed by the National Taxpayers United of Illinois PAC. DAN PATLAK -- IN HIS OWN WORDS My campaign for Commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review has adopted a radical new idea…educating taxpayers so they can...

One of the main reasons that little Todd Stroger lost his comfy job as president of the Cook County Board -- the office left him by his deceased father -- is because of the graft and payoffs to his friends and family members that he constantly perpetrated. It was so bad even Democrats were ashamed of him and voted him out of office in the last primary. But thanks to the fact that Illinois Democrats moved the primary to February President Stroger has eight months to continue giving his friends and family members cushy jobs paid for by the County...

Reporting from Washington — Mwenda Murithi, the Kenyan-born leader of a notorious Chicago street gang, was arrested 26 times after his student visa was revoked in 2003. Charged with at least four felonies, he served 30 days in the Cook County Jail for a 2007 drug violation. By law, he could have been deported immediately. But Chicago officials did not report him to immigration authorities because city and county ordinances prohibit them from doing so. Not long after he got out of jail, Murithi ordered a gang hit that resulted in the death of 13-year-old Schanna Gayden, struck by a...