After staring at my computer screen for more than an hour, I realized that my goal of providing a succinct and thoughtful analysis of what happened on a very weird day last week in Illinois government was impossible.

Instead, we're going to have to take this in pieces.

• The court case. C.J. Baricevic was one of the lawyers representing a host of unions in their successful St. Clair County lawsuit to force the state to pay its employees without a budget. The victory Thursday came just two days after a Cook County judge ruled that paying employees without an official state budget was a clear and total violation of the Illinois Constitution.

Why was St. Clair County's ruling so different?

Well, Baricevic happens to be the son of the county's chief judge, John Baricevic, who was once the county-board chair and is regarded as one of the most powerful Democrats in the region. The younger Baricevic is the local Democratic choice for Congress against freshman Republican U.S. Representative Mike Bost. According to Ballotpedia, the judge in Thursday's case also appears to be up for retention next year in the heavily unionized county.

Hey, I'm not saying nothing bad about no judges. I visit that fine county every now and then. I'm even told the judge in the case isn't the type to be sensitive to such pressures. "He's just a pro-labor guy at heart," explained one area politico, who added that I was "reading too much" into the local political angle.

I'm just saying.

House Speaker Michael Madigan likes to send "messages." He doesn't often explain what those messages are, but last week's surprising defeat of a bill to give the Chicago Public Schools a 40-day extension on its $634-million pension payment due June 30 was most surely a message to somebody.

Despite his spokesperson saying the day before that Madigan was "prepared to be supportive," it's clear that Madigan did not work to pass the bill, which was being pushed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. His staff did not urge members to vote for it before or during the roll call.

Madigan himself said he did not ask Republicans for a specific number of votes for a structured roll call, which is another indication that he wasn't ready to move the ball forward.

Madigan's deputy majority leader, Lou Lang, presided over the proceeding. A newspaper reported that Lang voted "no" so he could file a motion to reconsider that would keep it alive. Okay, but if you watch the roll call, Lang pushed his red button right after the voting opened, which probably sent a strong signal to the rank and file.

Governor Bruce Rauner gave rip-roaring speeches in several Democratic legislative districts last week denouncing the state's Democratic leadership. All of his visits were accompanied by Illinois Republican Party press releases bashing area Democratic legislators for being in the back pockets of House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

Some are warning that this tour is only making it more difficult to cut a budget deal before the government shuts down. By belittling legislators in front of their constituents, Rauner is risking that those lawmakers will get their backs up and switch to a campaign-war footing, just like the governor appears to be doing. When that happens, they won't want to cooperate.

But if you look at the numbers, Rauner did quite well in all of those districts.

The governor won 15 of the current 39 Democratic Senate districts last year, some by quite a lot. Despite what you may read, many of the Democrat-drawn districts are not prohibitively partisan.

Add in all the Republican Senate districts he won, and Rauner took 35 Senate districts to then-Governor Pat Quinn's 23, and came very close to Quinn in one other (Senator Linda Holmes').

Forget about the budget, forget about Governor Bruce Rauner's "Turnaround Agenda," forget about the almost unprecedented animosity during the spring legislative session between Democrats and Republicans.

The most talked-about issue under the Illinois Statehouse dome last week was a directive from one of the governor's top staffers to all state-agency directors.

The agency directors received an order from the Rauner administration Wednesday demanding that they and their staffs not meet or talk with any lobbyists unless the governor's Policy Office had first okayed the communications. The directors were also told to inform agency "stakeholders" that they didn't really need to hire lobbyists anyway.