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.

The federal criminal complaint against the seven people arrested in Chicago last week for federal bribery conspiracy is 42 pages long. Former state Senator Rickey Hendon is mentioned 21 times in those 42 pages, although never by name.

It's pretty clear from the complaint that the U.S. attorney has been looking at Hendon (D-Chicago) for at least the past four years.

In July 2008, the Chicago Tribune published a major exposé on state grants steered to local groups by Hendon. The Tribune claimed that half of the 48 grant recipients "were running dubious programs, or declined to show how they spent the money."

Conveniently, that very same month, the feds busted a Chicago police officer during a probe of gun-trafficking and public corruption. The cop quickly offered to cooperate to reduce his sentence. It doesn't take too much reading between the lines to see that the corrupt cop might have been given the task of helping the feds nab Rickey Hendon.

One of the police officer's longtime friends was Dean Nichols. Nichols and Hendon are close friends.

Finally, a little bit of good news for Illinois Democrats.

In stark contrast to the glacially paced House Committee on Investigations, the panel charged with deciding indicted state Representative Derrick Smith's punishment looks like it will move forward much more quickly.

The investigations committee took two months to decide that there was enough evidence against Smith (D-Chicago) to warrant punishment. Smith was arrested and then indicted just before the March primary on charges that he accepted $7,000 in cash bribes. It was June before that committee took final action.

The two House leaders then appointed members to the Select Committee on Discipline, and that committee's first meeting was last week.