Anheuser-Busch has reportedly hired more than a dozen Statehouse lobbyists this spring to protect its interests in a long-running battle to control how it distributes its brews in Illinois.

The St. Louis-based company has, in the past, owned a beer distributorship in Illinois. It sought to buy another one in Chicago but was blocked by the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. So the company sued in federal court.

In the process, Anheuser-Busch discovered that two relatively small Illinois "craft brewers" were allowed to distribute their own beer in Illinois, but out-of-state craft brewers weren't given the same privilege. The brewer's suit tried to use that contradiction to its advantage.

It appears that the Illinois State Rifle Association released some highly questionable poll results last week because top officials learned that a gun-control group was doing its own polling. The Rifle Association decided it wanted to get ahead of the curve, I'm told.

The Rifle Association claimed its poll results showed broad support in a handful of legislative districts for the right to carry a concealed weapon in Illinois, even in two African-American Chicago Senate districts. But there are serious problems about the way the questions were asked, including the fact that the phrase "concealed carry" was never even mentioned in the poll, despite a Rifle Association press release claiming it was. Concealed carry is one of the hottest issues of the spring legislative session.

The poll asked three very leading, loaded questions before getting to the carry issue. Respondents were asked if they felt safe walking around their neighborhood, if they believed local police can protect them from being "robbed or assaulted," and whether they believed they have a "right to defend yourself and your family from murderers, robbers, and rapists."

A big question on a lot of Statehouse minds right now is: Why would Senate President John Cullerton all of a sudden decide to string out his members yet again on a dollar-a-pack cigarette tax hike when he surely knows that the House will kill it for the umpteenth time?

Cullerton wants to raise money from the cigarette tax so he can kill off the controversial law legalizing video gaming in taverns, clubs, and truck stops. Video-gaming proceeds are supposed to subsidize part of the state's massive capital-construction plan, but the video-gaming program hasn't got off the ground after two years of preparations because the Illinois Gaming Board is taking its time to develop strict standards.

Part of the answer is that Cullerton loves the cigarette-tax-hike idea in and of itself. The man just downright loathes cigarettes and believes that raising the tax would cause people to stop smoking and prevent kids from starting.

But when the four legislative leaders sit down to cut a deal, they're supposed to stick to that deal unless the other leaders go along. The capital plan was just such an agreement. Breaking a pact like that is just not done. Ever.

One of the main reasons the Democratic Party did so poorly across the nation last year and lost ground in Illinois was the defection of senior citizens to the Republican Party.

On Election Day 2006, national exit polling showed voters 65 and older split their ballots 49-49 between the two parties. In Illinois, however, senior citizens went with Democrat Rod Blagojevich over Republican Judy Baar Topinka by 10 points, 50-40.

Last year, national exit polling showed Republicans with a huge 59-38 margin over Democrats among seniors. In Illinois, the exit polls showed that Pat Quinn lost the senior-citizen vote to Republican Bill Brady by 17 points, 55-38. Quinn ended up beating Brady by less than 32,000 votes. Blagojevich won his last election by more than 10 times that amount: 367,000. The lost senior vote accounted for more than half the difference between those two margins.

So some Democrats may be forgiven for cringing last week after reading the headlines about how Senate President John Cullerton was floating the idea of taxing retirement income. Their party needs to woo that all-important and rapidly growing demographic back to the fold, not alienate it even more. Those stories probably didn't sit well at all with the oldsters. There's a reason why only five states tax all retirement income, and it ain't fiscal.