Last year’s state budget talks were dragged into the bitter fight between the Senate and the House and the governor’s office over a massive bill to regulate carbon-based power plants. As a result, the House hurriedly and angrily jammed an appropriations bill over to the Senate before it could be fully checked for accuracy. Both chambers had to return during the summer to fix the mistakes.

After the Illinois House and Senate voted to pass legislation to partially pay down the state’s unemployment insurance trust-fund debt, top Democratic leaders gathered for a Statehouse press conference to boast about their accomplishment.

For decades, House Speaker Michael Madigan and everyone around him insisted that the man was always very scrupulous and extremely careful about not only the language that he used, but the language he allowed to be used in his presence. For instance, if a property-tax client of his law firm began to speak about legislation they were interested in, Speaker Madigan insisted he would immediately stop the conversation in its tracks and inform the client that he could do nothing for them. And nobody else ever said otherwise.

Canada's Prime minister Justin Trudeau, with the enthusiastic support of his assistant Deputy Minister/Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, unlawfully invoked Canada's Emergency Powers after two weeks of uncontestedly peaceful protest by mostly Canadian truckers using their rigs to occupy the streets surrounding Ottawa’s parliament buildings.  Before Prime minister Trudeau's emergency declaration, local law enforcement and the protestors enjoyed a certain obvious camaraderie because truckers are as beloved as police officers and it was a chance to demonstrate their mutual loyalty, trust, and respect.