Free Republic

Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military. A Blackwater subsidiary known as Paravant that until recently operated in Afghanistan acquired the weapons for its employees’...

In second place came Thomas J. McCracken, chairman of the RTA, who oversees the nation's second-largest public transportation system, and praised as one of the state's 10 best legislators by Chicago magazine. The field includes a retired Air Force major general and highly decorated prisoner of war, John L. Borling; lawyer and successful entrepreneur, John Cox, whose charitable organization renovates homes for the low-income elderly and disabled, and a highly successful dairy owner and stock analyst, Jim Oberweis, whose Oberweis Report ranks in the top five of all stock investment letters by the Hulbert Financial Digest. Add to these the...