I have two poll results to tell you about today. One is about an alleged criminal; the other is about a proven liar.

Expelled state Representative Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) is leading his only opponent by 38 points and is close to the 50 percent he'll need to reclaim his seat.

According to a poll of 556 likely voters conducted September 12 by We Ask America, Smith is crushing third-party candidate Lance Tyson 48-9. The poll has a margin of error of 4.15 percent.

Smith was expelled from the House in August, months after his federal indictment for allegedly accepting a $7,000 cash bribe. He's still on the ballot, though, and faces Lance Tyson, who was picked to run by the district's Democratic ward committeemen.

Tyson loaned his campaign more than $26,000 last week after I told my subscribers about this poll. That's most of what he's raised so far.

Most people looked at last week's veto by Governor Pat Quinn of the big gaming-expansion bill and saw nothing except defeat for the issue. But the governor appeared to deliberately leave some doors open that you could drive a riverboat through.

For instance, nowhere in his veto message did Quinn mention slots at tracks. Quinn had been an adamant foe of allowing the horse-racing industry to set up "mini-casinos" at their facilities, saying it would result in an over-saturation of the market.

If you were following the news last week, you already know that hundreds of AFSCME members packed the Illinois State Fair director's lawn last Wednesday afternoon and booed pretty much everybody who tried to speak at the annual Democratic event. The only person of consequence to escape most of the hostility was Secretary of State Jesse White (who is also exempted from the traditional fan booing of politicians at Chicago baseball games). But even White received a few boos at times.

"It is a great day to be a Democrat in Springfield, Illinois!" shouted Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon, the event's emcee, over loud catcalls. "And I am happy to be here with all of you, no matter what your point of view is," she continued, hoping to calm the angry crowd, which was far more AFSCME than Democratic.

It didn't work.

Governor Pat Quinn's office flatly denies it, but it's hard to see how last week's big announcement about calling a special session on pension reform wasn't at least partially related to a major Chicago TV station's special report on the very same subject a few hours after his proclamation.

The station, WGN, broadcast a lengthy documentary called "Pension Games" during its 9 p.m. news program, then hosted a live discussion afterward on its CLTV cable-television station, along with an exclusive sit-down with Quinn. The station hyped the program for days, and Quinn took clear advantage of the public-relations opportunity to promote himself, even taking an opportunity to whack the General Assembly for cutting the schools budget after receiving a viewer call-in question about how the pension bill would impact his property taxes.

"For all of us, Mark, I want to thank you," Quinn gushed to the program's host, Mark Suppelsa. He most certainly wasn't speaking for members of the General Assembly, however.