On the eve of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, a statewide poll showed the native son was leading his Republican opponent by 17 percentage points here.

The poll of 1,382 likely Illinois voters was taken September 5 by We Ask America. It had Obama at 54 percent to Mitt Romney's 37 percent. Another 3.33 percent said they'd be voting for an unnamed third-party candidate, and 6 percent were undecided.

That's way below where Obama was four years ago, when he won Illinois with 62 percent of the vote.

This is an important story that you may not have seen covered in any other local media. On August 16, Brandon Raub - a young U.S. Marine Corps veteran from Chesterfield County, Virginia - was forcibly taken from his home in handcuffs by his community's police in cooperation with the FBI, ostensibly for criticizing the government on Facebook. His detainment was filmed and uploaded to YouTube shortly thereafter (RCReader.com/y/raub).

What is shocking about this event is that he was taken without a warrant, and he was not charged with any crime. The authorities repeatedly told Raub's family that he was not being charged with a crime, even though they claimed his postings were "terrorist in nature." Instead he was literally grabbed by Virginia law enforcement and the FBI using a little-known "civil commitment" statute, which allows a person to be forcibly detained and isolated for mental illness/disorder via the order of a single judge or health administrator. This detainment can be indefinite, and permits the state to administer treatment and/or drugs against the individual's will, including vaccinations.

If you were following the news last week, you already know that hundreds of AFSCME members packed the Illinois State Fair director's lawn last Wednesday afternoon and booed pretty much everybody who tried to speak at the annual Democratic event. The only person of consequence to escape most of the hostility was Secretary of State Jesse White (who is also exempted from the traditional fan booing of politicians at Chicago baseball games). But even White received a few boos at times.

"It is a great day to be a Democrat in Springfield, Illinois!" shouted Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon, the event's emcee, over loud catcalls. "And I am happy to be here with all of you, no matter what your point of view is," she continued, hoping to calm the angry crowd, which was far more AFSCME than Democratic.

It didn't work.

The Illinois Republican Party has relentlessly bashed House Speaker Michael Madigan almost every day via press release during the past few months. Not many of those statements have been covered by the media, but the GOP is obviously hoping to make Madigan an issue in this election by blaming him for just about every problem in Illinois, even more than it did two years ago.

Madigan has also been hammered by the Chicago Tribune in a series of stories about his alleged conflicts of interest. Madigan initially dismissed the criticisms as "garbage" but eventually responded point-by-point in a letter that was mostly ignored by the media, and never addressed by the Tribune itself. The Tribune's editorial board has led the charge against the speaker over the years, demanding his toppling as the House's top guy.

House Republicans have tried for at least two decades to make the speaker an issue in campaigns. It's never really succeeded, mainly because people hadn't heard enough about Madigan to be moved by the GOP's negative advertising.