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 House and Senate Democratic leaders have once again dominated the quarterly fundraising race. The Democrats are currently sitting on almost three times the amount of cash as the Republicans.

House Speaker Michael Madigan’s three committees raised a combined $591,000 in the quarter that ended June 30. Madigan had more than $3.5 million cash on hand. Senate President John Cullerton’s two committees netted about $655,000 during the quarter. Cullerton finished with more than $2.7 million in cash and investments.

House Republican Leader Tom Cross’ two committees raised $353,000 during the quarter. Cross ended the filing period with $789,000 on hand. Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno raised just under $263,000 during the quarter but had more than $1.4 million on hand.

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.

A poll taken last week has Republican congressional candidate Jason Plummer leading his new Democratic challenger by 11 points.

The poll, taken July 9 by We Ask America, found Plummer ahead of Democrat Bill Enyart 45-34. The automated poll of 1,510 likely voters had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Plummer is significantly below 50 percent, and 23 percent of voters are undecided, so he doesn’t have this one in the bag yet. Enyart was appointed to the ballot late last month, so he has barely had any time at all to make an impression on the voters of the 12th Congressional District.

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.