I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and just as I was about to hang up, she stopped me short and insisted that we talk about Governor Pat Quinn's big-time raises to his top staff.

If you've missed the story, Quinn gave out raises of as much as 20 percent to his senior staff while those same people were busily cutting everybody else's budgets and devising tax-increase strategies.

Unlike the state's mind-boggling $13-billion budget deficit, this is a very easy issue to understand for people who don't pay close attention to politics.

My mother does follow Illinois politics quite a bit, however, and she appears to be just as incensed about the immorality of handing out selective pay raises during one of the worst fiscal crises in history as she is about the abject political stupidity of Quinn's decision.

To many Illinois-politics insiders, one of the more surprising aspects of this Rod Blagojevich saga is not that the former governor was arrested. Most of them knew for years that he was heading for big trouble.

The late Chris Kelly's alleged misdeeds as one of Blagojevich's top fundraisers didn't stir all that much surprise. He was a high-pressure fundraiser who wouldn't take "no" for an answer. The conviction of wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko also wasn't that far from expectations. The man was obviously up to his eyeballs in corruption.

But the name of the fourth person who prosecutors say was in on the alleged schemes to skim as much money as possible during the Blagojevich era has taken quite a few insiders aback.

Keep in mind while watching coverage of the Rod Blagojevich trial that reporters in the courtroom have a far keener understanding of what is going on than do the jurors. Their perceptions are not necessarily the same as the jurors' views. So their coverage may not match up to how the case will turn out.

For most of the jurors, this is their first time in a real courtroom. Unlike most of the reporters at the trial, this experience is all quite new to all but two of them who have served on juries before. And, unlike most of the reporters, they have limited knowledge of what the trial is all about and the context of the charges.

Most of the jurors know little of Rod Blagojevich and his administration except for their skimming of the local news and maybe seeing him a time or two on TV entertainment programs. One juror admitted that she checks the news "only for the weather."

Illinois House Republicans had a universal message for Representative Bob Biggins (R-Elmhurst) last week: You are officially an outcast.

Biggins infuriated his fellow Republicans by switching his position and voting for a $3.7-billion borrowing plan supported by Democrats. The money would be used to make the state's annual pension payment. Without it, the state would have to slash programs such as education and human services and health care or delay the payment, which could cost the pension funds tens of billions of dollars in the long term.