January 3 was not exactly a banner day for the Illinois Senate Democratic leadership. In high-profile moves, leadership's attempts to pass a bill legalizing gay marriage stalled, as did bills on gun control. Even a much-needed spending bill was unable to move out of committee. Pension reform went nowhere. The biggest winners were cigarette makers, of all people.

The gay-marriage bill turned out to be a dud. Opponents pointed out some serious issues with the bill's drafting, which, for instance, would have appeared to mandate that facilities owned by churches or religious groups allow same-sex marriage ceremonies. Proponents denied that, but they seemed to be on some shaky ground.

The measure was moved forward at the behest of some wealthy financial backers who appeared to dictate the timing, which is never a good thing in Springfield. Backers say that three senators who were supposed to vote for the bill were not at the Statehouse, and that kept them from passing it. But even if that were true, the drafting questions would likely have doomed the measure in the House. And the millionaire-funded media blitz just didn't work. Media blitzes, no matter how awesome to behold, aren't effective at the Statehouse if the actual bill is flawed and the votes aren't there.

It's difficult to argue with a point by the Washington Post's Greg Sargent shortly after news had broken of the mass murder at a Connecticut school.

"If today's shooting doesn't prompt action on guns," Sargent wrote on his Twitter account, "then nothing ever will."

You'd think that the shocking horror of 20 children and 6 adults murdered at that school by a crazed gunman using a semiautomatic assault rifle with high-capacity ammunition magazines would prompt some action, either nationally or at least locally.

But nationally the NRA has almost completely embedded itself within the Republican Party and allied itself closely with congressional GOP leaders. As a result, when one of its own members (Gabby Giffords) was nearly killed during an Arizona mass murder by yet another crazed gunman, the U.S. Congress did little more than applaud her return to the chamber.

Before Friday's horrific school shooting in Connecticut, people on both sides of the concealed-carry debate were saying privately that they did not expect Attorney General Lisa Madigan to appeal her major loss at the hands of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

A Seventh Circuit panel in Chicago voted 2-1 on December 11 to declare Illinois' strict laws on carrying guns unconstitutional and gave the General Assembly 180 days to come up with a new, much less restrictive law.

"A right to bear arms ... implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home," the majority opinion decreed, saying that Illinois had failed to show that restrictions on gun owners - including bans on concealed carry - had any positive effect.

Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court could be harmful to the anti-gun cause, both sides admitted last week. New York's wealthy, influential, and legendarily anti-gun mayor could oppose an appeal out of fear that the conservative Supremes wouldn't preserve his own state's laws, which allow him to keep most concealed weapons off the street. Other states that allow limited concealed carry, such as Maryland and California, will also probably oppose an appeal for the same reason. They just don't trust the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their restrictive laws.

We are what we eat is an age-old adage that has more implications than ever in the context of modern-day science and biotechnological experimentation with the genetic makeup of the food we eat. Whether it is the highly processed corn- and soy-based products that permeate nearly everything we consume or the animals we eat that are fed the same corn-based products, the long-term effects of consuming genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified organism (GMO) food are yet to be fully documented. (This does not include the cross-breeding of cows and goats with spiders, for instance.) Of course, mankind has been cross-breeding plants for millennia, so some ask: "What is the controversy about?"

The controversy emerges when mega-corporations (also known as big agra) such as Monsanto produce seeds that are injected with the DNA of other species to produce specific effects such as resistance to chemicals and herbicides. Beyond the self-perpetuating - some might say monopolistic - marketplace this creates (Monsanto sells the herbicide Roundup that the seeds it sells are resistant to), critics are concerned about the long-term effects to human health by tinkering with Mother Nature so much.There's a Catch-22 at work here, too. The long-term studies that would allay consumer fears are not pursued by the purveyors of the GMO products, but those same purveyors fiercely defend their intellectual-property rights so that third parties cannot publish their own independent studies done with the GMO products. If the GMO products are so wonderful, then why not open the doors wide on independent research?