The ongoing Illinois drama over the medical-malpractice-reform debate intensified last week when President George W. Bush paid a visit to Madison County.

Yes, that Madison County - the favored courtroom home to many of the nation's wealthiest trial lawyers, made universally infamous by the multi-billion-dollar class-action lawsuits filed over asbestos and Marlboro Lights, and the focus of a multi-million-dollar Supreme Court race last year that featured both candidates accusing each other of being soft on child molesters in front of a backdrop of stories about small-town hospitals closing their doors and doctors fleeing to neighboring states, and ending with the trial lawyers' hand-picked Democratic candidate losing both the campaign and his appellate court seat, which then spun off a bizarre sequel when the loser immediately filed a nine-figure defamation lawsuit against his opponent's financial backers.

It was probably no accident that Governor Rod Blagojevich chose a Naperville school last week to unveil his proposal to criminalize the sale or rental of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors.

If he had used an impoverished inner-city school as a backdrop, the assembled parents might have asked him about the real-life violence that their children face every day.

The dust isn't even settled yet from the 2004 campaign, but candidates are already lining up for the 2006 race. You and I might be sick of campaign news, but to these people the game is just beginning.

Joe Birkett, the DuPage County state's attorney who narrowly lost the 2002 attorney general's race to Democrat Lisa Madigan, sent a letter to Republican leaders late last month telling them he is looking forward to being on the statewide ticket.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is becoming way too predictable.

Twice now, the governor has told a legislator that he's for a gaming-expansion deal, then his staff denies that the governor said any such thing.