Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 2006 – A recent spike in Baghdad violence is the insurgents’ response to Iraqi, U.S. and coalition efforts to rein in sectarian murder squads and gangs that operate in some sectors of the city, a senior U.S. military officer said today. For example, in Baghdad’s violence-prone Dora neighborhood, “there’s no question that the anti-Iraqi force elements are punching back, hard,” Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. Through stepped up bombings, murders and kidnappings, insurgent leaders seek to sow fear and instability among Baghdad’s citizens as...

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. -- A federal jury Wednesday convicted the head of this city's Democratic Party and four others of scheming to buy votes with cash, cigarettes and liquor last November to try to get key Democrats elected. Jurors in the monthlong trial deliberated more than five hours before convicting local Democratic Party chairman Charles Powell Jr., 61, and Kelvin Ellis, 55, the city's former director of regulatory affairs, of felony conspiracy to commit vote fraud. Also convicted were Democratic precinct committee members Sheila Thomas, 31, and Jesse Lewis, 56, and City Hall worker Yvette Johnson, 46. Ellis, Thomas,...