House Speaker Michael Madigan was hoping on March 7 to avoid the same results as the previous week.

Back then, one of his pension-reform proposals received just one vote - his own. None of his other pension amendments received more than five votes.

That wasn't supposed to happen. Members of his leadership team thought some of those amendments would get at least a few dozen votes. Oops.

Making matters worse, the House Republicans refused to even participate in the process, with not a single member voting up, down, or "present" on Madigan's amendments.

Asked about the GOP refusal to vote, Madigan on last Wednesday's Illinois Lawmakers television program said he believed the Republicans had made a "mistake."

"They're elected," Madigan told host Jak Tichenor. "And their electors tell them to come here and vote. They don't tell them to come here and not participate."

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 have very serious consequences.

A federal appellate court has given the General Assembly until June 8 to pass a new law allowing some form of public carrying of loaded weapons. After that deadline, Illinois' laws against public carrying would be struck down. Illinois is the only state in the nation that totally bars concealed or open carry by citizens.

However, an aide to Alvarez told the House Judiciary Committee last week that the federal appellate ruling means nothing to the state.

Governor Pat Quinn used the phrase "our Illinois" (or a variation) almost 30 times last week during his State of the State address

"In our Illinois, everyone should have access to decent health care."

"In our Illinois, working people find good jobs not just for today but for tomorrow."

"In our Illinois, we find a way to get hard things done."

In our Illinois, we are a "community of shared values."

While the phrase was mainly just a rhetorical device for a constitutionally mandated annual address, it is important to point out that Illinois isn't really "one" and doesn't have all that many "shared values."

"Our Illinois" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Imagine trying to govern a state so diverse that it included both Boston, Massachusetts, and Richmond, Virginia.

Off the record, most top Illinois Republicans these days will tell you that they want a state bill legalizing gay marriage passed as soon as possible.

It's not that they're necessarily in favor of gay marriage. Many of them are publicly and privately opposed. Some of them do support it, even though they don't feel they can vote for it because it might destroy their careers in the next GOP primary.

The reason so many Republicans would like to see the bill passed is because they know - with the huge new Democratic majorities in both state legislative chambers - that it's eventually going to pass anyway, and they want to get this issue out of the way and behind them as soon as possible. The issue is trending hard against the GOP's historical opposition, and they want the thing off the table before it starts to hurt them.