I don't believe I've ever seen a governor openly and loudly laughed at on the House floor. At least not while he was present.

Governor Bruce Rauner was doing pretty well with his legislative audience during his first State of the State address last week, delivering strong applause lines with his refreshing calls for bipartisanship. He even thanked legislators "for your service," and predicted they would do "great" things together. He warned them that he would say things they liked and didn't like and urged them to see the "big picture" - which he claimed will "lift up all of the people we've been chosen to represent."

Members of the Legislative Black Caucus were especially receptive to the governor's attacks on labor-union apprenticeship programs. Rauner claimed about "80 percent of individuals in Illinois apprenticeship programs are white even though Caucasians make up fewer than 63 percent of our population," and demanded that be addressed with legislation. Black and Latino legislators have tried for years with limited success to break those barriers, and no governor has ever so clearly sided with them.

Legislators erupted in loud applause when the governor proposed raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. But when Rauner added "over seven years," their laughter was even louder, and longer. Democrats appeared to realize that they might've fallen for a bait and switch, and it was mostly downhill from that point on.

Governor Bruce Rauner didn't completely close the door to higher taxes last week during a speech at the University of Chicago, but he made it clear with what he said and what he did that he wants huge state budget cuts.

"We have every reason to thrive," Rauner said during the speech. He then laid out his reasoning for why the state is on a "fundamentally unsustainable path," pointing his finger at the "policies and the politics mostly coming out of Springfield really at the core of the problem. ...

"The politicians want to talk about 'Well, let's raise the income tax to fix the debt or the problem," Rauner said. "Raising taxes will come nowhere near to fixing the problem and in fact will make part of the problem worse and just kick the can down the road. ... This is the critical lesson that we're seeing. We're on an unsustainable path, we need fundamental structural change, and raising taxes alone in itself isn't going to fix the problem and in a lot of ways it's going to make it worse."

We likely received an early lesson last week in how the upcoming state-legislative session will play out with new Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and a Democratic General Assembly.

The Democrats jammed through their plan to limit the term of incoming Republican Comptroller Leslie Munger to two years, with a special election in the presidential year of 2016. Rauner appointed Munger to replace Judy Baar Topinka, who passed away last month.

Rauner remained silent in the days leading up to the special legislative session, but the House and Senate Republicans went ballistic.

As you likely already know, Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka passed away last week.

Topinka had a stroke the morning of December 9, but that's not what killed her. In fact, by the afternoon, she announced she was going to walk to the restroom. Her chief of staff, Nancy Kimme, told her not to try because she was paralyzed on her left side. In mocking defiance, Topinka started kicking her no-longer-paralyzed leg.

By early evening, medical staff told Topinka that she'd be out of the hospital in a few days and would then need three weeks of rehabilitation. The indestructible Topinka appeared to have won again, just like she did after she fell and broke her hip and badly injured her back after giving a speech in 2012. The accident slowed her down, but it never stopped her, never silenced her, never broke her spirit, never stopped her from running for re-election.