While all eyes last week turned to the Republicans' lawsuit against the new federal district map for U.S. congressmen in Illinois, a similar GOP lawsuit against the legislative district map for Springfield's state senators and representatives may be teetering on the brink of collapse.

Many of the same arguments are being used by the Republicans in both the congressional and state-legislative cases. Both suits have a partisan angle. The Republicans claim that the majority Democrats so intensely used political gerrymandering to draw their maps that the end result illegally deprived Republicans of their constitutional rights.

The court that is hearing the congressional-map case has yet to rule on the political angle, but the court that heard the state-legislative-remap case dismissed the Republicans' political charge last week. The political gerrymandering strategy was never considered all that solid because nobody has ever won a case using that argument. The strategy is given about the same chance of success - slim to none - in the congressional case.

In an exclusive interview last week, CME Group Executive Chair Terry Duffy said he's more than ready to leave Illinois if he doesn't get what he believes is a "fair" tax deal from the General Assembly.

The company owns the Chicago Board of Trade and several other firms. It's a very big wheel in this state, and leaving would be the worst sort of news for Democrats who raised taxes this year.

Duffy has been under intense pressure all year from Wall Street to reduce expenses. State taxes are listed as expenses on corporate books, so Duffy has been publicly fuming about his company's $150-million-a-year state-tax burden since corporate tax rates were increased.

Duffy claims CME pays 6 percent of all corporate income taxes in Illinois, and pays more than any other company. "I don't know another company in the world that pays 6 percent of another state's taxes."

It's long been a tenet of public opinion that voters want the government to cut its budget and don't want new revenues, but also don't want any actual programs slashed.

However, the latest Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll shows a slow but sure trend in favor of specific state budget cuts and revenue increases.

A large majority of Illinoisans do still believe in magic. According to the poll, 58 percent say the state budget can be balanced by cutting waste and inefficiency. And because of this belief in an utter fantasy world where fairies reign and pixie dust solves all our problems, too few want to actually cut state spending programs.

Pat Quinn has been trying to get rid of Illinois Power Agency (IPA) Director Mark Pruitt almost since the day the governor was sworn into office. He finally did it, but the move is backfiring.

The governor is a big cheerleader for alternative power sources such as wind and solar. But Pruitt, whose main job is negotiating contracts with electricity generators on behalf of consumers, refused to sign some alt-energy contracts because they'd cost consumers too much money.

Pruitt's IPA was created after mega utility ComEd announced that it intended to buy electricity via a weird reverse auction system that was roundly slammed by Attorney General Lisa Madigan and every other reasonable political leader in Illinois. As a result, Pruitt claims to have saved Illinois electricity consumers $1.6 billion since 2007, and he has the numbers to back him up.