Update: The rumor of the Gas City video turned out to be nothing more than that, just a rumor. The police have released a sketch of the suspect. The image to the left is how it appeared on America’s Most Wanted. The murderer is still at large.

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I am writing a follow-up on the investigation. As many of you know a sick maniac murdered 5 young people execution style at a strip mall in the small south suburban town of Tinley Park, Illinois. He attempted to murder a sixth person who survived by the will of God. She moved her head at the same moment he pulled the trigger and the bullet hit her neck but did not cause any critical injuries.

She attributes being alive today to her Christian faith.

It has been widely reported that the Lane Bryant where the murders occurred did not have video surveillance cameras. Investigators have thus turned to other businesses in the area searching for video that may help identify the murderer. I received an anonymous tip this evening that police may have acquired an image of the offender from video surveillance captured at a local area Gas City. In addition to video surveillance investigators may also have a lead from credit or debit card information used in the purchase of items at the gas station. If true this could be a tremendous break in the crime.

Rumors tend to move pretty quickly in small towns such as Tinley. Seeing that the tip is completely unsubstantiated I decided to contact the Tinley Park police department. I spoke to the dispatcher who put me through to a woman working with the investigation but neither person had any information pertaining to what I had been told.

I personally hope they have an image and a credit card trail; this person needs to be taken off the streets as soon as possible.

The Tinley Park Police Department has been very good in keeping the residents of the area informed. They have a press conference every morning at 11:00 a.m.

In this morning’s press conference the investigators released an updated description of the offender along with a confirmation that the offender made sexual advances toward one of the victims but did not molest any of them.

Firstly, we can now confirm reports that one of the victims was the target of sexual advances by the offender, in that she was fondled. There was no further sexual contact beyond that.

Secondly, a clearer picture of the offender is coming to light. He is now described as having 3 to 5 “puffy” corn rows that go back from the front of his head, with one strand with green beads hanging over his right cheek. He is also described as being large framed, with weight proportionate to his height. Some reports have erroneously indicated the subject wore a red jacket. That information is incorrect. The subject wore a black jacket, as was indicated in the initial descriptions. I would like to stress, this description is what the offender looked like at the time of the crime on Saturday morning.

We continue to investigate a large number of leads in this case. We continue to request the public to call the Tip Hotline at 708-444-5394 with any possible information they may have, regardless of how trivial it may at first seem.

The surviving victim has also released a statement.

“On Saturday, February second, an unspeakable tragedy occurred and five of the bravest women I have ever met were senselessly murdered and taken from their families. My deepest sympathies and condolences go out to their families and friends. Please know that during the unfathomable events of that day, their thoughts were focused on you and coming home. My heart aches that they were unable to do so, and I am working with the authorities in any way possible for all of the victims. I ask that the media please respect all of our families and allow us to grieve and cope privately with the horrific crime that ripped our worlds apart. I also ask that everyone respect that neither I nor my family can discuss the horrible events of that day. I thank everybody who has expressed concern and ask that any person who can assist in the investigation contact the authorities immediately”.

Sympathy and warm wishes are pouring out from the community. This is a terrible tragedy. Please keep an eye out to help the police get this person off the street before harm comes to anyone else.

Previous Webloggin

See Also: Chicago Sun Times

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Here’s something you don’t see everyday:

MERRILL, Wis. - Mark Krombholz had to look twice at his new calf — one time for each nose. Lucy was born on his hobby farm last week. “I didn’t notice anything too different about her until I got her in the barn,” Krombholz said, “and all of a sudden I went to feed her a bottle of milk, and I thought maybe she’d been kicked in the nose and there were two noses there.”

The second, smaller nose sits on top of the first.

Do you think she has twice the smelling power?

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The AP is reporting that the incident that prompted a Boulder, Colorado high school to close due to the sighting of two men entering the school, both wearing camouflage and one a ski mask, has turned up nothing so far.

Authorities have sent the SWAT team in for a more thorough check of the premises.

(AP) BOULDER, Colo. Police launched a room-to-room search of Boulder High School early Thursday after a cook reported seeing two suspicious men in the building, both wearing camouflage and one wearing a ski mask.

Authorities said no classes or groups were meeting in the school at the time. Police sealed off the building and school officials canceled classes for the day.

The initial search by a dozen officers and a bomb-sniffing dog turned up nothing, but a second, more thorough search by a SWAT team was under way, Police Chief Mark Beckner said.

Beckner said there was no indication the men had been armed.

“We don’t know if this is a prank, we don’t know if this is a burglary, we don’t know if it’s something more than that,” he said. “You really can’t take any chances these days.”

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UPDATE:

A high school was locked down Thursday after a cafeteria worker saw two men in camouflage and ski masks enter the building more than an hour before classes, a district spokesman said.

Officers from various law enforcement agencies could be seen outside Boulder High School, and the entrances to the parking lot and the building were blocked off.

Boulder Police spokeswoman Julie Brooks confirmed that the school was locked down and that authorities were on the scene, but she released no further details.

It has just been reported that a high school in Boulder, Colorado has been locked down after two masked men entered the school.

I can’t find confirmation of this on the web but WLS AM radio in Chicago just reported it.

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In true Illinois and Cook County tradition Bradley Stephens, Rosemont, IL trustee will be named to fulfill the remainder of his father’s term as Mayor of the Chicago suburb. Donald Stephens the first and only Mayor of Rosemont passed away on April 18th after battling stomach cancer.

In what has become a disturbing reality in Chicago and the surrounding areas we have seen a spate of hereditary successions to political office. Whether it be by death, illness, resignation or retirement the elected officials of the area seem to think political office is the family business and the offices within are for them to bestow upon family as they see fit.

This is an area that has seen Todd Stroger succeed his incapacitated father as head of the Cook County board, though wholly unqualified. Dan Lipinski stepped in to fill his father’s congressional seat after a post primary late withdrawal in the 2004 race, and interim President Bobbie Steele passed his county board seat to her son. These are but a few among many cases and it is no surprise, though one does weary of the practice. My proximity to my father did not make me a great die maker and neither does it make these beneficiaries of nepotism good representatives of their constituency. Often their prior public service is pointed out as a qualification but frequently that public service was a result of familial machinations more than any type of qualification. In Illinois this seems to cut across party lines (as if we really had anything resembling an option), as both sides have taken advantage of their power to enrich their progeny or other relatives. This is often done at the expense of the governed.

Stephens tenure saw the tiny Village of Rosemont grow to become a convention and entertainment powerhouse in the Chicago area. While the municipality benefits from excellent geographical location its growth was shepherded by the elder Stephens during his 51 year tenure and for that he deserves praise, but no such accolades should be given to the son who apparently is a winner in the lucky gene club.

It is about time we start looking at qualification over family connection and substance over a particular surname. Otherwise we need not bother going to the polls and instead can watch the birth announcements and society pages to determine our representation. We have a voice and we need to start using it at the ballot box lest we lose it forever.

[Discuss over at the Republic...]

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Wasn’t it Rosie who said that mere heat can’t make large buildings collapse? I wonder how she, and her fellow travelers, will deal with the fact that mere heat made a major portion of an East Bay freeway collapse. It is, in some ways, 9/11 on an infinitely smaller and non-malevolent scale.

[Discuss this post over at the Bookworm Room...]

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Gov. Jon S. Corzine didn’t see the need to wear his seatbelt as his Chevrolet Suburban he was riding in was traveling 91 miles per hour, 26 m.p.h. over the posted speed limit, according to New York Times. Why is that? Just because he’s a politician and has those neat flashing lights in the grill, doesn’t give him the right to speed. Was Corzine’s meeting with Don Imus and members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team really all that important? Corzine remains in critical condition and on a ventilator.

The superintendent of the state police, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, said Tuesday that the trooper driving the vehicle, Robert J. Rasinski, had told investigators that he did not know how fast he was traveling as he led Mr. Corzine’s two-car caravan, emergency lights flashing, from an Atlantic City speech to a meeting at the governor’s mansion in Princeton. But the recorder clocked the speed at 91 m.p.h. five seconds before the Suburban collided with a white pickup truck, and at 30 m.p.h. when it slammed into a guardrail along the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway, the police said. Mr. Corzine, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the front passenger seat to the back, breaking his thigh bone in two places, a dozen ribs, his breastbone and collarbone and a lower vertebra. He remains in critical condition and on a ventilator after three operations on his leg. Colonel Fuentes said that troopers who drive the governor and other state officials are given discretion to use the emergency lights and exceed the speed limit in cases of an emergency and, because of security concerns, are advised not to let the governor’s vehicle remain “bogged down in a traffic jam.” But “if it’s a nonemergency situation, we would ask them to obey the traffic laws and the speed laws,” Colonel Fuentes said in a late-afternoon conference call with reporters. (more)

[Discuss this post over at the Right Truth...]

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Somehow I can’t work up any sadness, only fear, when I read this bathetic New York Times article about the current crop of young Palestinians, many of whom are stone-cold killers. Perhaps it was the second paragraph that put me off, since it shows that the Times has bought completely into the Palestinians’ view of their relationship with Israel, and have completely abandoned historical truth:

They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel [I don’t subscribe to this occupation crap, since the land was divided by the international community, or Israel won it in defensive wars], largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints [barriers and checkpoints put in place to keep these killers from blowing up Israelis, one might add].

Or maybe I lost it when I read about the poor parents, stunned by their children’s evil. Perhaps if these same parents had been conversant with the Bible, rather than just the Koran, they might have had some insight into sowing and reaping. A parenting community that celebrates the death of its children, and that elects murderous thugs into office really shouldn’t be surprised when its children are the generation that is “most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that, in NYT’s world, the fault isn’t with an utterly corrupt system that focuses on violent death, but on Israel, for putting up walls and check points to insulate her own people from the diseased mass of humanity festering in the Palestinian territories:

Israeli checkpoints, barriers and closures, installed to protect Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers, have lowered these young people’s horizons, shrunk their notion of Palestine and taken away virtually any informal interaction with outsiders, let alone with ordinary Israelis. The security measures have become even tighter since the election to power a year ago of the Islamist group Hamas, which preaches eternal “resistance” to Israeli occupation and rejects Israel’s right to permanent existence on this land.

During most of the 1980s and ’90s, as many as 150,000 Palestinians came into Israel daily to work, study and shop. While they were not treated as equals, many learned Hebrew and established relationships.

Now, the only Israelis whom Palestinians see are armed — soldiers and settlers. The West Bank is cut into three parts by checkpoints; Gazan men under 30 are virtually unable to leave their tiny, poor and overcrowded territory. Few talk of peace, only of a lifetime of “resistance.”

The whole article is filled with stories of helpless parents, despairing “martyrs,” and rants against Israel, with one paragraph — one measly paragraph — mentioning the Israelis’ contention that the Palestinians have contributed to their own descent into madness.

The New York Times is sickening, and really deserves the Walter Duranty Award for this kind of maudlin garbage. (And to those of you who have abandoned reading the New York Times, the reason I still check it out is because, no matter how its sales sink, it is still the news organization that sets the tone in other publications around the world, many of which subscribe to it so that they can reprint its stories or follow its editorial tone.)

[Discuss this post over at the Bookworm Room...]

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A blogger who filmed a protest in San Francisco is in jail because he has refused to turn the film over to the police per a court order. This blogger, Josh Wolf, fancies himself as some First Amendment crusader. I will leave that debate to the lawyers but it seems silly to me that he filmed a public event and will not release the tape. I understand some criminal acts took place and some people were hurt. In fact, a police officer received a fractured skull when one of the hooded thugs hit him with a pipe or a bat. It appears that the cops want to get the person who did it. Wolf evidently interviewed some of the protesters and they did not have their hoods on. The cops probably believe they can get a match by looking at clothing. I really don’t care but this strengthens my view that once protesters stop being peaceful they lose their protection and should be handled appropriately, including shooting them if they are violent. We will see on March 17th just how peaceful the anti-war crowd is down in DC. In any event, Wolf’s mother had this to say about why the police want the tape:

“Truthfully, I don’t think it’s even about the tape or the police car,” she says. “They want him to testify so they can develop a list of who protests in San Francisco.” WaPo

Give me a freaking break. The police already have a list of who protests in San Francisco. They call it the San Francisco White Pages.

Previous: New York Times Portrays Anarchist As Embattled Journalist

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But, these are the people that wet their pants for a good guilt trip, ie. Global Warming and the Church of Gaia. So maybe it’ll work. Jesse doesn’t have much influence anymore and he’s just kinda drifting slowly away…

Civil rights leader wants more minorities in showbiz (Read the article carefully as it leaks out he’s really only speaking about one minority in particular)

“No date’s been set yet but the confab would be designed to bring together top execs and experts to seek solutions in several areas of concern”:

Hosts on many cable networks are nearly all Caucasian, or as Jackson puts it “All day, all night, all white.” (Gee, let a white man say something similar and he’d jump his sh*t, wouldn’t he?)

Minorities have limited access to jobs at major talent agencies. (Proof?)

Casting of minority actors remains a problem. Jackson noted, pointing to a UCLA study by Russell Robinson, released in December and showing that found 69 percent of Hollywood roles were reserved for white actors. (Whoa, let’s see now, black Americans make up 19-20% of the population so my math comes up with 31% of the roles are reserved for black actors & actresses. That means there is an OVER-EMPLOYMENT of 11% in these roles, not an under-employment.)

“It’s really an issue of infrastructure,” Jackson added. “The voting doesn’t at all reflect the current reality of the population.”

So applying Jackson’s logic let’s make sure that the NBA and NFL as well as a couple of other sports positions are only 20% black. Hmmm, what about the Asians? This of course would not make for the most exciting games now would it?

Bottom line: You need the best in the particular field whether it’s sports, film, or whatever to get the job done. Doesn’t make a damned bit of difference what flavor you are. Don’t let Racists (and that’s what they are) dictate and pressure anyone in any way to accept anything less!

Sidenote: Anyone ever ask Jesse how many non-black people are employed by his Rainbow/Push pressure group?

[Discuss this post over at the RightWingCafe...]

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