Your article on education funding was one of the most thorough and accurate analyses of the funding problem and the competing bills that I’ve seen.

The only quibble I had with the piece was the reference to a “poison pill” in the budget requiring school funding to be “evidence-based.” Although that provision was included in the budget bill that ultimately passed the General Assembly (see page 433 of the PDF version of the enrolled SB6), that identical language was included in the Republicans’ “Capitol Compromise” budget proposal, SB2214, which the Democrats had no hand in drafting. I’d refer you to page 533 of that bill for the reference to “Evidence-Based Funding.”

Amidst growing outcry against civil asset forfeiture, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Justice Department’s new directive focused on increasing the practice.

In the end, Mike Zolnierowicz had only one choice. Governor Bruce Rauner’s top political lieutenant and former chief of staff, the man everyone calls “Z” who was most responsible for winning the 2014 Republican primary, simply had to resign late in the afternoon on Friday, July 14.

The week began with the early-Monday firing of Richard Goldberg, Z’s close friend and hand-picked successor as Rauner’s chief of staff. Rumors had circulated for months that First Lady Diana Rauner had turned on Goldberg and wanted him out, and in the previous few weeks it was known among a select few that the governor had been calling around looking for a possible replacement, including calling a couple of people in Indiana who declined the offer.

But Z and others were caught totally off-guard when Goldberg was abruptly fired and not offered a position in the vast campaign apparatus that Z had constructed. Rauner had not only made a major decision without consulting Z, his supposedly number-one guy; he had also needlessly kicked Goldberg to the curb.

After Governor Bruce Rauner hired Illinois Policy Institute President Kristina Rasmussen as his new chief of staff, I reached out to one of the House Republicans who voted to override the governor’s budget and tax-hike vetoes. How was he feeling?

“You mean after the irate phone calls and e-mails and the letter that arrived at my house today telling me and my wife (by name) to move out?” he texted back. “I’m doing fine – seriously I am. I can just guess what the new chief of staff might have in store for me.”

Rasmussen’s anti-tax group essentially weaponized its Facebook page against lawmakers during the run-up to and aftermath of the overrides of Rauner’s vetoes.