During the House floor debate over the National Rifle Association-backed concealed carry bill last week, I was told by an intimate of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan that the Speaker wanted to ...

You can always tell when somebody is losing an argument because they are constantly backtracking and recalibrating. And it’s no different with gay marriage. Back in January, for instance, newly ...

As it turns out, the Illinois House Democrats didn’t need the Republicans to put 30 votes on a significant pension reform bill.There’s been worry for at least two years that the Democrats ...

A recent meeting between Metro East legislators and Gov. Quinn’s staff turned heated at times, and as a result nothing was accomplished in the standoff over Quinn’s appointments to the Sou...

“Pardon me,” said Ty Fahner to a nearby microphone which he had accidentally bumped during testimony to the Illinois Senate Executive Committee last week.Fahner could probably be excused f...

House Speaker Michael Madigan was hoping last Thursday to avoid the same results as the previous week when he presented some new pension reform ideas.The previous week, one of his pension reform propo...

Nobody ever really knows what’s going through Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s head except for Madigan himself. So, the actual purpose of two highly choreographed gun control and p...

Illinois House Democrats were told during a private caucus meeting in Springfield last week that, despite what Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says, inaction on concealed carry would ...